


the rest of you, the best of you, honey, belongs to me

by dasyatidae



Category: Crooked Media RPF
Genre: Coming of Age, Exorcisms, Family, Happy Ending, In love with your best friend, Magic, Multi, Possession, Small town living, Witches, evil ex boyfriends, in love with the hot new guy in town, overcoming the curse that haunts yr family, true love spells, who is a detective investigating you and yr best friend slash looking for a serial killer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-26
Updated: 2019-04-26
Packaged: 2020-01-12 10:02:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 29,657
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18444284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dasyatidae/pseuds/dasyatidae
Summary: Sure, the Owens of Maria's Island can do magic, but for generations they've been cursed: every man an Owens witch loves dies young. When Lovett falls for his best friend Tommy, he figures they better part ways before the curse gets him, too. But Tommy returns to the island years later, with a dangerous boyfriend and a handsome detective in tow, and Lovett has to figure out how to break the curse, if he can...A Practical Magic AU! ▲ ★ ♥︎





	the rest of you, the best of you, honey, belongs to me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [labellementeuse](https://archiveofourown.org/users/labellementeuse/gifts).



> Happy Crooked Exchange, labellementeuse! I hope you enjoy this AU. I've been wanting to write a podsa take on Practical Magic, the '98 movie, since a little over a year ago, when my lovely pal dirigibleplumbing and I drank a bottle of wine on a sunny California porch and sketched out the possibilities for our respective fandoms. She wrote [this amazing MCU piece](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16590779/chapters/38880692), and I'm excited to post my witchy tommyjonjon OT3 for you today. <3 Thank you for your excellent prompts and for giving me the opportunity to pursue a passion project on your behalf. :) 
> 
> This fic would not have come together over the past weeks without my pals: epic thanks to dirigibleplumbing for the thoughtful beta help, to beginningwitha and agreatperhaps12 for cheers, and to katie kenopsia for, seriously, all the encouragement. <3
> 
> A spoiler-y content warning/note on my use of archive warnings: I am hesitatingly going with choose not to warn because I'm not sure how well this fic checks off any of the other boxes, and I don't want to mess that up for folks. Here's the deal: we got some underage frickle frackle (older teenage characters, not explicit, consenual), and some violence that I tried to keep off screen, but it's discussed. The fic loosely follows the arc of the Practical Magic movie, so you can check out [that plot summary](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Practical_Magic) if you have concerns, but yeah, content warning for discussion of domestic violence, death, and murder. Two characters bring back a minor character from the dead with magic and then kill him again (off screen). None of the other archive warnings apply. 
> 
> Title from that Hozier song, "NFWMB." This story is archive locked; keep it secret, keep it safe!

_Excerpt from tape recorded statement of Jonathan Lovett, March 8 th, 1998—_

 

When I was a little kid, I thought my aunts were all powerful—the cleverest women in the world, who could fix a skinned knee with a twitch of the nose or tip a B+ to an A with a single stern word to my teacher. Little magics, practical magics. I lived in a world of small wonders then—pancakes shaped like Pokemon and rose petals pulled under the full moon to make a neighbor lucky in love.

It wasn’t until I was older, until my father’s accident, until my mother died of a broken heart, until the aunts and their wuthering, clapboard house on Maria’s Island became my home instead of a vacation novelty, that I began to see their limits, the cracks in their glamor. That summer, the summer I turned ten, I learned to love them more—because I was all cracks myself, heart obliterated, parents gone, brisk New York life of ferries and museums and Coney Island ice cream cones and strip malls gone. Because my aunts were my only refuge, and they took me in without qualms, without doubts.

“In this house,” Aunt Francis told me, “we have chocolate cake for breakfast, and we don’t truck with silly things like bedtime or string beans.”

I remember the way she beamed down at me, while Aunt Jet pulled me close, an arm around my shoulders, conspiring. It was the first time in a week anyone had talked to me above a hushed tone, without pity.

I have always loved math, and I trace my math-sense back to doing sums at the kitchen counter with my father late at night, when he got home from work. I treasured the shine being able to stay up late gave me among the other kids, because I was in no other way a cool child. I attributed my nocturnal energy to being a doctor’s kid, but the aunts attribute it to me being born under a full moon—so I always have a bit of the lunatic in me, in the quick way I talk with my hands and the quicker way I run my mouth. Loud, loud, loud.

My aunts valued my math-sense more for how I could measure spell ingredients perfectly or draw the most geometric sigils. Look, don’t make that face. This story’s gonna go a lot quicker if you just hear me out, if you just accept that the aunts are witches who do magic—yes, fuck, that we’re all witches—but _anyway,_ like I was saying, they’d sit with me and try to help me go over my geometry homework. I remember learning about triangles, the most stable shape. And not just that, but, like, how the equilateral triangle, a perfect little pyramid, was a symbol—the symbol for change in Calculus, that magic system of numbers which, like alchemy, is about _change_. And, one, this discovery dawned on me, because it bridged my two words—magic and mundane—which brought me some relief. I’ll tell you, I think until then I was worried that if I embraced my aunt’s world, the world of Owens House and what it meant to be an Owens on Maria’s Island, I’d have to give up my parents and the life we’d had together, you know?

But the other thing—and this took longer to sink in—is that my aunts, for all their power, were forever a wobbly shape, incomplete, without my mother, exile though she’d been. Their craft forever had a chink in the armor, a silent gap between notes like a piano with a clunking, broken key—if you paid close attention.

I didn’t get that at first because I was a kid, sure, but also because it was just me, an only child, before we took in Tommy Vietor.

And then, because Tommy was, uh, my whole world. I mean, my only friend. As far as I was concerned, we were the real thing, the two of us—nothing missing, nothing else needed, nothing that could keep us apart.

Uh, fuck, I don’t know, sorry, is that weird for me to say—?

 

* *    * *    * *

 

Lovett loved Aunt Jet because she was serious about the chocolate cake for breakfast thing. (Lovett was the one who couldn’t stick with that diet. After the third morning of a jittery sugar high and a stomach ache, he taught himself how to make scrambled eggs.) He loved Aunt Francis because she read to him at night at first, when he was gripped by fear that kept him from falling asleep, just like she’d done when he was a very little boy; and she commenced story time in such a brisk, warm way that Lovett didn’t feel ashamed. Part of why it worked was that Aunt Francis would just settle in with whatever happened to be on top of her stack, like it was her reading hour that Lovett happened to be joining, and he had to have a spirited argument with her if he wanted to read something other than the _Journal of Herbal Medicine_ or _A History of Ulster_. Aunt Francis wouldn’t read the science fiction pulp that Lovett was starting to bury himself in—and to be honest, as he ventured into the village bookstore’s pulpier titles, he would _not_ have wanted to read them aloud with anyone, much less his _aunt_ —but she would read fairytales, the classics he’d loved when very small. She made it clear that they were wise stories, filled with hidden meanings, not a childish thing to enjoy at all.

His favorite story was The Death of Koshchei the Deathless. Aunt Francis read Baba Yaga’s honeyed promises and curses in a sinister rumble, and she made Lovett voice the beautiful warrior princess Marya Morevna and her hapless husband Prince Ivan. If Lovett’s voice cracked sometimes when Ivan’s parents died and his sisters, one by one, married, leaving Ivan to walk their empty castle’s gardens alone, Aunt Francis never made him feel self-conscious.

The night Tommy Vietor moved into Owens House, no storm clouds troubled the sky, but the summer air was thick with destiny. Lovett should have known something serious was afoot when the broom clattered over in the front hall, and the aunts exchanged a long look.

“Tommy Vietor’ll be sleeping over tonight,” Aunt Francis told him, ushering Lovett up the stairs to make the trundle bed with summer quilts from the cedar box in the attic. “What? Don’t give me that look,” she told Lovett’s frown. “You said you wanted to have a sleepover.”

What Lovett had said was that he wished he had friends with whom he could do normal kid things, like have sleepovers with pizza and night long Mortal Kombat tournaments. Tommy Vietor wasn’t his friend. They didn’t even know each other, and there was no reason they would, outside of Lovett’s occasional sappy daydream. Tommy Vietor was—well, popular. The thought of he and Lovett having a buddy-buddy sleepover was laughable. Fantasy. But it didn’t make sense to make _that_ argument. Short of coming home with a black eye, Lovett wasn’t sure what he could say to make the aunts understand his social status; they thought he hung the moon and stars. “But it’s _Tuesday,_ ” he protested instead.

“Yes, and Tuesday’s a very lucky day,” she replied. But there was no enthusiasm in her voice. She sounded brisk, weary, sad.

While Lovett smoothed the quilts over the trundle bed, pulling the sheets into snug hospital corners just like his father had taught him, he thought about the harried woman who had cried in Aunt Jet’s arms that spring. Tommy Vietor’s mother.

In and of itself, it wasn’t unusual for women from the village to tap softly on the door in the middle of the night, to sit huddled and wary in the kitchen while the aunts mixed an elixir, chanted a spell, or offered gentle advice. Lovett found it strange that these were often the same women who would turn away from the aunts in the village, their fingers twitching into the sign that meant _witch, go away_ , the same women who picked up the kids from school who would push Lovett in the locker room or the back science hall, calling him _evil,_ calling him _gay,_ as if those words meant the same thing. But he was used to this dissonance. And proud, too, that the aunts never turned away anybody who needed help. They understood the sisterhood—no, the human connection, Aunt Francis said, her hand squeezing his shoulder—that bound everyone together, every person on the island, every person in the world—and how to hurt someone was to hurt one’s own self, to turn away someone seeking refuge was to cast yourself out into the world, cold.

Tommy Vietor’s mother needed a lot of help. That much had been clear to Lovett. Her knock on the door was loud, urgent, and it woke Lovett up, even in his garret room at the top of the house. He crept down to sit on the stairs, blanket wrapped around him like a cape; there was a particular spot where he could peer between the engraved wood railing into the kitchen. When Aunt Francis spotted him, she said it was just as well, he might as well come down.

“We need something from you, poppet,” Aunt Jet said, leaning to plant a kiss on the crown of Lovett’s head and steering him to the stool that was across the kitchen counter from the crying woman.

She had Aunt Francis’s handkerchief, the navy blue one with the marching elephants, and she was scrubbing her face with an intensity that seemed to suggest she didn’t like to cry, or maybe that she didn’t want to cry in front of a child. She looked much younger than his aunts. Her hair was cropped short, and one of her cheeks was red and swollen, covered in a scabbing scrape. Her eyes were scrunched shut, but when she opened them and looked at Lovett, they were a bright cornflower blue.

That was when Lovett recognized her. Tommy Vietor’s mother. She volunteered in his classes sometimes, and he loved to stare at the rippling fall of her waist-length hair, which glowed a rosy gold Aunt Jet called strawberry blonde.

“You cut your hair,” Lovett said before he could help himself. He couldn’t look away from her shorn head. It was patchy, like someone had hacked away handfuls at random. 

She started to cry again.

“Lovett,” Aunt Francis reprimanded.

“I’m sorry.” Lovett felt like crying himself, all of the sudden. All that beautiful, wavy hair, gone. Something was wrong, and he didn’t understand.

“You’re Jonathan,” Ms. Vietor said. “You’re in my son’s class.”

Lovett nodded, then he looked between his aunts. “You said you needed me to help?”

“Just need a snip of your hair, sweet.”

Lovett’s eyes flashed to Ms. Vietor’s head again; his expression must have been one of alarm. This time, she smiled. It made her look even younger, a flash of dimples and crinkles at the corners of her eyes. 

“Just a few hairs.” Aunt Francis tsked. “But you have to _give_ them, love.” She was coming at him not with the sheers she used to trim his curls but with the little silver knife she used for spellwork.

“You can have them,” Lovett recited, bowing his head. The little knife was so sharp, he didn’t even feel it as Aunt Francis clipped off one brown curl. She held it in her palm to show him, then carried it to Aunt Jet’s work station. She commenced a spell, moving back and forth between her grimoire and the large wooden cutting board where Aunt Jet murmured suggestions, arranged and rearranged all the ingredients for a piece of magic that Lovett couldn’t follow. He had just begun his study of his aunts’ book, browsing pages of simple cantrips and indexes of herbs and flowers. This spell was deep within the grimoire, the book cracked open to its middle.

When they finished, Aunt Jet handed Ms. Vietor an amulet, which she wrapped carefully in the blue handkerchief. Aunt Francis moved to stand behind Lovett. “We keep him safe.” She squeezed his shoulders. “And your Tommy will be safe too.”

“Will you—can you promise?”

The aunts looked between each other. Their own special language, the set of their mouths, the expression of their eyes. Aunt Francis exhaled slowly, nodded.

“We promise,” Aunt Jet said. And Lovett felt it, the weight of the words. This was something extra, something beyond the amulet’s magic.

“We’ll take care of him, no matter what.”

“Thank you.”

It was an adult moment, a half wordless exchange occurring literally over his head, and right then, Lovett desperately wanted _in._ Popular Tommy Vietor, who picked the teams for recess soccer, who knew all the answers in class—Lovett didn’t understand what could hurt him. Surely he didn’t need Lovett’s protection. Lovett wanted to offer it, all the same.

“And me,” he said, in a small voice. He seemed to startle the women. Ms. Vietor blinked, looked like she might cry again, so Lovett hurried to say, “I’ll help. I’ll take care of him too, if he wants.”

“Thank you,” she whispered, then she pulled on her coat, zipping it up to her throat. It was a man’s coat, bulky waterproof canvas that swallowed her hands and came nearly to her knees. “I—I should go. I can’t be gone too long.”

The aunts walked her to the door. They lowered their voices, but Lovett could still hear.

“Are you sure this is what you want? We could help _you.”_

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “No, I can’t. Just this.” She sobbed, only once. “It’s the most important thing. And you promised.”

“We promised.” Aunt Francis’s voice was heavy. When they shut the door behind Ms. Vietor, they lingered, leaning on it for a moment, before returning to the kitchen to usher Lovett back upstairs to bed.

Lovett hadn’t seen Tommy’s mother since then. The school year had all but ended, serious classes lapsed into study halls and field days, everyone looking forward to the start of the break. Tommy had been skipping afternoons with his friends to hang around the dock where all the townies swam in the harbor, and he and Lovett hadn’t exchanged a look or a word. Lovett was desperately looking forward to the end of the school year; summer was an excellent reason for him to avoid the village as much as he could, biking down only when a trip to the bookstore or the grocer was warranted. Now, Tommy Vietor was staying the night. Lovett couldn’t make heads or tails of it.

The bed made, he proceeded through a series of chores, hoping his productivity would dispel the disquiet that had settled on the house. Finally, Aunt Jet came back from the village. The Aunts pulled him into the living room and sat him down.

“We have something difficult to tell you,” they said.

“Is it about Tommy Vietor?”

The aunts were always frank with him, always honest. So they told him without dissembling that Tommy’s mother was dead, that his stepfather was gone, taken away to a jail on the mainland, and Tommy was coming to live with them.

“We promised to take care of him,” Aunt Jet said, “and this is the best arrangement for now.”

“Remember, you promised too, sweets.”

Lovett realized that the shock he felt was actually anger. “I know,” he said. “You don’t have to tell me.”

But he wasn’t sure how he could help, not when Tommy arrived at their door with a harried social worker, not when the aunts instructed him to take Tommy upstairs and help him settle in. Tommy followed Lovett blank-faced, like an automaton, and when Lovett showed him the trundle bed that would be his that night, he climbed into it immediately. Lovett stood, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, as Tommy started crying. All he could think about, stupidly, was how certain Tommy was presenting a book report, the wise ass jokes he cracked that were _just_ this side of mean, the field day last year he hit the winning home run.

What could _he_ say to Tommy? Should he offer to go to the village, to bring back one of Tommy’s actual friends? But no. Lovett cried too easily, but he hated people to see him cry when he was truly upset. Tommy might feel the same. Tommy had understood, well enough, the day he found Lovett hissing in pain, after he’d skinned his knee on the blacktop, one lunch he’d tried to play basketball and the other kids had gleefully been too rough. Lovett had limped to the bathroom and had sort of given up—just for a few minutes, he was always better after just a few minutes—and when Tommy found him, he politely looked away while Lovett scrubbed at his face, but he wouldn’t go when Lovett insisted he was _fine._ He walked him to the office and sat next to him while the nurse rinsed bits of gravel out of the wound, and he’d even put a hand on Lovett’s shoulder. Lovett had to _try._

Tentatively, he sat down at the edge of the bed. “Hey,” he said.

Tommy didn’t tell him to go away, so he waited until he had cried himself quiet. It took a long time. Lovett lay down next to him, teetering on the edge of the bed as he tried to leave a careful space between them. Eventually, he asked, “Hey, do you want to hear a story?”

“What?”

“When my parents—when they died, and I came here, my aunts used to read me stories at night. It helps. There’s this one, it’s my favorite. It’s an old Russian fairytale about a prince named Ivan and his three sisters.”

“How does it go?” Tommy breathed. His face was shiny with tears and snot, but he was looking at Lovett—really looking at him, not gone inward, lost in his grief.

Lovett realized he better seize this opportunity, this spotlight of sorts, to keep Tommy’s attention. If he could only make the tightness around his eyes soften, make him smile… He started to turn, to climb off the bed and find the book.

“No, don’t go.” Tommy clung to handfuls of his shirt, pulling Lovett closer so his freckles swam in Lovett’s vision. “Can you just tell it to me?”

“Yeah, okay.”

So Lovett recited the story as best as he could—how the lonely, gentle prince stumbled on the war camp of the warrior princess, who took a shine to him so bright she married him and brought him home to tend her castle while she rampaged around the country with her armies. Lovett expected Tommy to find that plot twist unreasonable, but he nodded, like Marya Morevna’s devotion to Ivan was natural—Ivan, who couldn’t even save her from the evil Koshchei’s kidnapping, though he tried and tried until Koshchei got fed up with him and sliced him into little pieces with his sword. 

“So is that it?” Tommy whispered. “The end?”

“Hardly!” Lovett hurried on. “The princes who married Ivan’s sisters, they know he’s in trouble. They go all around the country to pick up his pieces—which is gross, I know—and they put him back together. Bring him back to life.”

“Oh.” Tommy sighed, and Lovett wished he had picked a different story. “Does he rescue his warrior princess then?”

“Eventually, yeah.”

“What, does he outsmart the bad guy? Did he get a super power when he came back to life?”

“Nah, he’s still totally outmatched. He just loves Marya Morevna a lot, and he won’t give up. Eventually his magical horse has to step in and kick Koshchei in the head, and then they live happily ever after.”

“The horse saves the day?” At that, Tommy did smile, and while Lovett was backtracking to fill in all the important details, he fell asleep.

 

When Tommy seemed soundly asleep, Lovett slipped out of the bed very quietly, hopping over the floorboards that creaked as he made his way to the door and down the stairs.

There was no light coming from under either aunt’s door, but as he’d expected, both Aunt Francis and Aunt Jet were sitting in the kitchen, passing a bottle of wine back and forth. Aunt Jet was holding their tabby, Alex the Great, on her lap, and Aunt Francis had a basket of dried herbs from the cellar spread across the counter, partially sorted. She was smoking a cigarette, the project neglected in front of her.

“Hey, sweets,” Aunt Jet said, as he hesitated in the doorway. Alex mewled, twisting in her lap to blink his single eye at Lovett. “Couldn’t sleep?”

Lovett hopped up into his usual seat. The kitchen clock said it had gotten very late, but no, he wasn’t tired.

“Where’s your blanket?” Aunt Francis asked.

“I put it on Tommy.”

She nodded, slipped out of the room, then returned with a knit blanket from their front room, which she wrapped around Lovett over his protests. They were feeble protests, though. Lovett’s hands tightened on the soft wool, grateful for its weight and its warmth, its slight woodsmoke smell from living folded on the couch by the fireplace.

“Why didn’t you help her?” he asked. “Why did she die?”

He ducked his head, abashed, like they might see his unintended question, burning beneath— _why couldn’t you help my mom? Why couldn’t you break the curse?_

“We wanted to help her,” Aunt Jet said.

“It was her choice,” said Aunt Francis. “You can’t help people who don’t want to be helped.”

“But—but that’s not fair. Not everybody’s free to make choices. She was stuck with that man. He hurt her, and then he killed her. How can you say it was her choice to stay when she was _stuck.”_

Aunt Francis stubbed out her cigarette. “You can offer, but you can’t make people do things, Lovett.”

“Why not? You knew he was bad. You could have done something. You could have made him leave, go far away from the Island. You could have turned him into a toad.”

“Sweets, it’s a complicated thing,” Aunt Jet said. “I wish I had a better answer for you. Maybe we should have done more. We try not to interfere too much—exert our will, our power, over others. Think about it, if we made decisions about how things should be on the Island, for these people’s lives—well, we’d be acting on incomplete information, always, wouldn’t we? We’d be saying that we know what’s best for them, for their lives. And we don’t.”

“But—but if you don’t, then all these other people are going to decide things, people who are bad, people like Ms. Vietor’s husband. You would be better at deciding things than him or people like him. If you don’t, it’s like you don’t care. It’s like, what’s the point of doing magic? You can’t just sit by and let people _die.”_

Lovett didn’t realize he was shouting, that he was crying, until Aunt Jet was shooing the cat off her lap and pulling Lovett into that warm space, into a tight hug.

“It’s not fair,” he heard himself sob. “It’s not fair. You should have made him go away.”

“I’m sorry, sweets,” Aunt Jet murmured. “We let you down.”

There was a scuffling sound from the hall. Lovett pulled back from Aunt Jet’s shoulder and saw Tommy, his face white. He had Lovett’s blanket. For a second Lovett thought he was seeing a lost fragment of himself, the boy from earlier in the spring who had stared owlishly at a spell being created for a woman with bruises on her neck. But it was Tommy, of course it was Tommy, standing uncertainly in the doorway.

“You do magic,” he said. “Could you bring her back to life?”

“No,” Aunt Francis answered.

“You _could_ ,” Lovett said. “It’s in your book, the very back of your book. I saw it.”

The aunts looked at each other. Lovett wondered if they would punish him, somehow, for exploring the dark secrets of the grimoire, the pages they had instructed him to avoid until he was older.

But Aunt Jet just said softly, “When life is gone, it’s gone. We could _bring her back,_ but she wouldn’t be the same.”

“It’s the darkest magic. It wouldn’t be _her.”_

“She wouldn’t want that, to be twisted into something monstrous. Her spirit wants to rest.”

Lovett felt like he should argue, for Tommy’s sake—there _had_ to be a way, somehow—but when he looked at Tommy, there was defeat, maybe acceptance, on his face. A fragile emotion he knew, instinctively, he shouldn’t disturb.

He came to sit next to Lovett at the counter, and Aunt Francis made them both hot chocolate, which neither of them did more than sip. Lovett couldn’t help thinking about his own mother, unable to rest, becoming something _monstrous._ The aunts were right. That magic would be wrong.

When the aunts finally shepherded them upstairs, Lovett figured he should climb into his own bed and let Tommy have the trundle bed all to himself.

But Tommy stood morose and then asked, “Can I sleep next to you?”

“Uh, yeah, but you better come up here.” His mattress was a little wider than the trundle bed, he thought.

Tommy grabbed his pillow and took the space Lovett offered, and they both shifted, trying to settle without knocking knees or lying uncomfortably close to the edge. It was weird, Lovett thought, being so near someone in the dark, hearing their breathing. Lovett used to sleep in the middle of his parents’ bed sometimes, but he had never crawled into bed with the aunts for comfort.

“Hey,” Tommy whispered. “Thanks, for all the things you were saying. I wish it was like your story, though, how Ivan’s family finds all his scattered pieces, and he’s alive again, just like that.”

“That’s the problem with the magic thing,” Lovett said. He thought about the curse, his mother’s terrible silence after his father died, the Aunts living alone together away from the world. “You think it’s going to be like a story, but there are all these rules. It’s too complicated.”

“So _you_ can do magic too?”

Lovett turned his face into his pillow for a moment. “Yeah,” he answered, finally. “I mean, I’m still learning. But it’s not that hard. Maybe, if you want, I can teach you.”

He waited, worried Tommy would hear his heart pounding, would move away. _Gay, witch, evil._ Their classmates’ taunts began to play in his ears, taking over the quiet space between them.

But Tommy said, “Okay.” He didn’t sound freaked out or disgusted, just exhausted. “You could try. I’m not very good at learning things though.”

Lovett was speechless. By the time he’d found a proper protest, Tommy had already fallen asleep. 

 

* *    * *    * *

 

They went back to school in the fall, and the other kids didn’t know what to make of their sudden companionship. They knew all about Tommy’s mother of course, but most of the salacious retellings and gossip had run their course by the first week of September. Death, Lovett had learned, made people uncomfortable; they would rather think and talk about something else. He watched as one by one, their classmates approached Tommy, making hesitant bids for his attention. Lovett was waiting, he realized, for Tommy to force a smile and try to go on like he had before, like nothing had changed. Score the winning goal in the game, flick dissected frog parts at the girls in the front row, skip English to go to the beach with his buddies. That would have been the normal thing to do.

The first week, Tommy sat next to Lovett during lunch, crosslegged against the wall of the library, a tactical location with a good view of the field and the ball courts, not too far from possible adult intervention. He brooded while their classmates approached one by one to entreat him to get up.

“Come on, Tom, let’s play soccer.”

“No,” Tommy said. “I’m not going to play.”

“What? Why not?”

“I don’t feel like it.”

“So, what, you’re just going to sit here with _him_. You know he’s a—a—”

“What?”

“Just because you’re living with _them,_ doesn’t mean you—”

“What, are you two boyfriends now?”

“Ryan, don’t,” one girl said. “His mom _died.”_

Then they went away, shooting Tommy puzzled, resentful looks over their shoulders.

“You can go,” Lovett said on the second day, setting down his sandwich. “You don’t have to stay with me. I don’t mind.”

“I meant what I said. Besides, they suck. I’d rather stay with you. Unless, uh, you don’t want me to.”

“No, you can. It’s just—”

“What?”

“You never cared before. When they said things to me.”

Tommy studied his hands, and said, “I know better now.”

 

A few weeks later, Tommy stopped coming home from school and crawling into his bed in the garrett room, eating parts of his dinner at Lovett’s insistence in their sort of blanket fort, the quilt pulled over their heads.

It happened when the moon was tipping from waning to total dark.

Lovett hadn’t planned it, but when they threw open the front door and Tommy began to clomp upstairs, Lovett’s feet took him in a different direction…

To the front garden, to pull spicy, yellow marigold petals—and more, a sudden inspiration, to dig his thumbs into the dried flowers’ cores and pull apart handfuls of threadlike seeds.

To grab at the bit of dandelion fluff that was clinging to the weave of his sweater—and to Tommy’s sweater, which he had flung onto the coat rack as soon as he’d dropped his backpack by the door.

To brandish the soft gray feather he’d found on the walk home—likely belonging to one of the doves that sounded mournful trills outside their window each morning.

To Aunt Jet’s box of sewing notions, lost this past week behind the couch, where he found a length of yellow ribbon lace, wound around a piece of cardboard and secured with a pin.

To the kitchen, where he pulled hawthorn and yarrow tea from two of the large ceramic jars on the window sill.

To the cellar, to cut down dried rosemary from where it hung from the rafters.

Gathering this bounty, Lovett scattered the seeds around him in a circle, humming words of protection—a little ditty the Aunts used, that he’d recognized at once as the one his mother sang over his crib. Dusting his hands, he mixed the herbs and flowers carefully and tucked them into a cheesecloth satchel, coaxed the copper kettle into whistling its most cheerful notes, and stood on a chair to find a special occasion mug in the back of the cabinet, a big earthenware tumbler glazed with mottled sunset colors. He wrapped his hands around the mug while the tea steeped, a pressure building between his brows as he focused as hard as he could on Tommy’s elusive smile.

Aunt Francis wandered into the kitchen and leaned over his work. “Herbs to banish grief,” she said.

“Not to banish it,” Lovett replied, eyes still scrunched closed. “It shouldn’t—go. I just want to lighten it, make it easier to bear.”

The egg timer rang, and Lovett released the mug, pulled out the tea bag with a spoon and set it aside. He didn’t mind his aunt watching, until she dragged her fingers through the scattered remnants on the cutting board. “Marigold, hawthorn, yarrow—and primrose, Lovett?”

He fumbled the ribbon bow he was tying around the handle of the mug, the feather stuck into its knot, and had to tie it again. “Only a pinch. For color.”

“I see.”

He was ready to pick up his concoction and flee, but she placed the honey on the counter, tapping the lid of the jar. “Don’t forget the sweetness, dear.”

Lovett obediently stirred in a large, dripping spoonful.

He carried the mug up the stairs so carefully, eyes on the surface of the liquid, setting the mug down on the ground to open their bedroom door instead of shouldering it like he usually did.

Tommy was in bed, as Lovett had expected. Lovett sat down next to him and pulled the blanket back from his face. He was neither asleep nor surprised to see Lovett.

“Hey Lo,” he whispered, a little joke of his.

Lovett rolled his eyes, feeling the corners of his mouth tug up into a smile. “Sit up. I made you something.”

“Hmm?” Tommy wriggled up to his elbows, then sat up and took the mug that Lovett pushed into his hands. “What’s this? Tea?”

“Drink it. I made it for you. To, uh, help you feel better.”

“I’m not sick,” Tommy protested, but he sipped the tea. Made a face but quickly said, “It’s not that bad.”

“Go on then.”

Tommy drained half the mug, then handed it back to Lovett. “You drink some.”

“But it’s for you.” Lovett sipped it anyway.

They sat quietly, handing the tea back and forth, until the mug was empty. Lovett watched him set the mug down on the floor, brushing the edge of the feather with his fingertips. He yawned. “Lie down with me?”

“Okay.” Lovett was tired too, he realized, that familiar, pleasant sleepiness that came after a rush of magic. He pulled off his sneakers and climbed under the blanket. Tommy rolled over so his back was to Lovett. By now, after a few months of these sleepovers, Lovett didn’t hesitate, feel abashed or unsure, as he wriggled snug to Tommy and wrapped his arms around him. He knew, because Tommy had told him one night in whispers, that his mother used to hold him this way to help him fall asleep when he was sad. Even though he was used to it, his heart still lurched—that mixture of sweetness and sorrow, like the tea—when Tommy caught his hand in his own and pulled it against his neck, under his chin.

That night, when they woke up, Tommy came downstairs with Lovett to dinner.

He ate his dinner.

Then he laughed as Aunt Francis and Lovett told a story about Alex the Great waiting all afternoon at the gate to give the mailman—his one great love in life, strangely—a mouse, so pleased with himself at his fine present.

Then he got up from the table to get seconds.

“Our little curse breaker,” Aunt Jet said, giving Lovett an impressed look across the table, and for once, it wasn’t about Lovett being a _boy_ , his lot cast outside the familiar circle of Owens women’s love and loss. Well, it still meant _that_ —which caused a weight like a peach pit in his stomach, a dark seed doomed to bear dark fruit, something strange Lovett couldn’t quite bring himself to examine—but today it also meant that he’d done good, small magic, making Tommy Vietor _laugh_.

 

* *    * *    * *

 

So Lovett and Tommy grew up together.

They went crabbing off the dock.

They rode their bikes into the village to buy slushies and rent movies that they watched in elaborate pillow forts in the living room.

They made up their own language and tried to speak it to each other for weeks at a time.

They made zines and listened to tapes that came in the mail.

They played hours of video games, until the aunts kicked them out of the house to play outside.

They built a boat. (Which was not very seaworthy, not even seaworthy enough for the placid pond across the field from the house. It might have sunk, Lovett bailing frantically, Tommy laughing too hard to be any help. That was okay though. Lovett always, always tried to make Tommy laugh. A lot of the time, he succeeded, too.)

After a while, the kids seemed to forget that Tommy had been one of them, a leader, one of their shining princes. They didn’t come after him like they had Lovett, but they didn’t invite him into their games, their conversations, or their sleepovers anymore, either; the compromise seemed to be that they left him entirely alone. And as long as Lovett stayed within his charmed circle, they left him alone, too. No more heckling, no more punches or shoves. Tommy still knew all the answers in class—as many answers as Lovett, despite his baffling, mulish insistence that he wasn’t good at school, wasn’t smart—and he played on the lacrosse team, but when he wasn’t at practice, they were mostly together.

Being with Tommy was a revelation to Lovett. All the hours when they were simply _around_ each other, not necessarily talking or playing, were so strange to Lovett, an only child. They could just live their lives in sync, reading comic books in their separate beds, doing homework side by side in the kitchen, or helping the aunts in the garden. Often, they spent time not talking, not really hanging out, but just existing comfortably side by side. It was a warm, wonderful thing.

Tommy would watch Lovett bustling over the aunts’ spell book, and sometimes he would say, “I wish I could do magic.”

“It’s not that great,” Lovett always told him. “Besides, I’m sure you can. I just gotta teach you better.”

And Tommy would shoulder up next to him, staring down at the strange book, and they’d spend hours giggling over its weird instructions, mixing ingredients together and imagining all the wonderful things they could do when they were grown up, independent and powerful.

 

Lovett had to tell Tommy about the curse, eventually. One afternoon their second summer together, a Nintendo tournament had lapsed into lying side by side on the rug in the game room. It was a sticky hot day, and even with the windows open and an endless supply of chilled Diet Coke and rootbeer, Lovett felt lethargic—lethargic enough to let Tommy lead their lazy conversation into perilous territory. It made it easier, somehow, to reveal what would have caused him panic and endless procrastination to say if he’d been planning.

 _What do you want to do when we’re grown up?_ Tommy had asked. Then he hmmed and hawed over his own ambitions, told Lovett that he wanted to see the world and to get married someday, maybe. As if those were important secrets.

“What about you?” he prodded.

Lovett made a noncommittal sound.

“Do you think you’d marry a girl?” Tommy persisted. “Or…a guy?”

Blood sang in Lovett’s ears, to think about what parts of the teasing and gossip at school Tommy had taken in, maybe accepted about Lovett. But he managed to lie very still, and his voice sounded calm enough when he said, “It doesn’t matter for me at all.”

“What? Why?”

“Because I’m cursed.” _This_ was an important secret, and Lovett found he could wriggle closer to whisper to Tommy the tragic history of the Owens, the ancient betrayal and vengeful magic reverberating through the generations, how the men Owens witches loved invariably died young.

“But you can do magic,” Tommy said, when he’d finished. “Can’t you break the curse?”

“Dunno,” Lovett said. “Figure if you could, someone would have already. Like my mother.”

“That’s how she died?” Tommy asked, barely audible.

“Well, that’s how my father died. She, uh, was too sad after. I don’t think she really believed in the curse, before, and she blamed herself. You know.” Lovett hoped Tommy knew. He didn’t want to say.

Tommy squeezed Lovett’s elbow. “Oh.”

“So that’s why I’m going to be an old maid, like the aunts.”

“Couldn’t you be with a girl?”

Here it was. Lovett took a deep breath. “I don’t know, but I think…probably not. Does that bother you?”

Tommy’s answer was immediate. “No!” Lovett loved him so much. “I think—I haven’t told anyone—but I think me too. I mean, I could like a guy as well as a girl.”

“Oh. Really? Wow.” Lovett flopped down on the rug on his back; he felt winded, like someone had tackled him into seeing stars. “I guess I always thought it was only me.”

Tommy tugged on his sleeve till Lovett was looking at him and then rolled his eyes. “There are probably others. They just don’t know it yet.” Lovett had never thought of that before. “It’s the Island. It’s so small. It makes people think small. You’re from the city.” Tommy sounded wistful. “Things were better there, right? Do you think you’ll go back?”

“I don’t know,” Lovett said, trying to keep up with the conversation, which felt so _fast_ suddenly _,_ like following along with a dialogue in a half-learned, second language.

“We should go. We can live together in the city.”

“I thought you were getting married?”

“Sure. Me, you, and the person I marry, we’ll all live together. That way we can be happy and avoid the curse.”

“But who will take care of Owens House then?” Tommy didn’t love the house the same way Lovett did, but he wouldn’t disregard it entirely, Lovett thought.

“The aunts. Obviously. They’re going to live forever. So, how’s this, what if we spend summers here and the rest of the year in the city?”

Lovett had to bite his lip to keep his smile under control. “Yeah, alright, Thomas,” he said very seriously. He held out his hand, pinky extended, for Tommy to promise. “Let’s do that.”

 

Tommy never learned to do magic, but he became part of the Owens family, as if, Lovett thought, he’d been with them always.

 

* *    * *    * *

 

[Another voice on the recording.] It’s, uh, not weird. It’s okay. Go on. So you and Tommy aren’t related at all? I thought you might be, like, cousins.

Related? Oh my God, no. No. That would be—I mean—

 

* *    * *    * *

 

Lovett and Tommy _spent the night together, slept together,_ countless times; but they only fucked once. _Fucked._ That word felt harsh, abrupt for what it was. But it _was_ abrupt—oh God happening, beautiful, everything, and then over—and Lovett couldn’t think the words _made love_ without blushing, anyway.

It happened Beltane night when they were seventeen. They weren’t on the Island. The four of them had piled into the old Volvo and driven several hours inland to an annual weeklong gathering of the aunts’ broader coven, which included a handful of kids of different ages. Past years had been pretty tame, Lovett and Tommy relegated to babysitting the youngest of the group. This year, when two sulky fourteen year olds were conscripted into that duty, they found themselves drifting with the older kids to their own bonfire—across some fields and a creek, as far from the adults’ revelry as possible—passing around a bottle of whiskey and a crumpled pack of cigarettes. It was surprisingly, delightfully fun, being part of a group, talking and laughing, having a full audience for his jokes—right up until Lovett saw Louis making unmistakable eyes at Tommy across the fire. Right up until Lovett saw that Tommy was making eyes at Louis.

He was so, so used to having Tommy at his side, having the bulk of his attention. As soon as he was hit by this awful wave of jealous lust, watching Tommy and Louis’s conversation become a careful dance of flirtation, it seemed ridiculous that he hadn’t pieced together the truth of his feelings before. That it hadn’t occurred to him that there was more to _him and Tommy_ than consummate best friendship. Certainly, he had never thought of Tommy as a _sibling;_ he and the aunts had folded Tommy into their family, sure, but there was never a stated or implied proscription against thinking of him romantically. It was more that they were so much together, there hadn’t been time for Lovett to _long_ for Tommy, to contemplate a reality where he reached out and Tommy wasn’t there. Lovett knew Tommy was handsome, sure. Though they still often crashed together in the game room after staying up too late watching movies, they had had their own rooms for years, so Lovett was at liberty to pursue his fantasies alone at night. He would think about Tommy sometimes, but that was only natural, because Tommy was so handsome, and it wasn’t like there were a lot of lookers on the Island.

Tommy was handsome, and Louis was handsome too, in a way. And they _liked_ each other, clearly. Lovett wasn’t sure whether he was going to scream or throw up.

He shouldn’t have worried, though. Tommy didn’t leave the fire with Louis.

When Lovett couldn’t take it anymore and bolted—no destination beyond _away—_ Tommy caught up with him and grabbed his wrist, pulled him close. When he’d shaken, for once inarticulate, in Tommy’s arms, his want, his rage, and his doubt caught in his throat, Tommy had kissed him. Kissed him and kissed him, in the middle of a field under the stars, lying on top of their sweatshirts, which Tommy carefully laid out so the grass wouldn’t make Lovett itch. Lovett didn’t have to doubt his care was love because Tommy whispered it to him that night before they fell asleep in the room they were sharing—they’d nicked some lube from Ira’s bag, locked the door, and tried _everything_ they could think of until the point of exhaustion— _I love you, I love you,_ he said.

But Lovett woke in the middle of the night from a dream where Tommy’s words blended with his own shouts and sobbing. A vivid parade, Tommy dying again and again, horrible death after horrible death, Lovett unable to save him.

Of course Lovett had thought about the curse, talked about the curse. He’d told Tommy about the curse. He’d meant what he’d said—that he wouldn’t fall in love—but it had been so relieving to tell Tommy his secret, that he wasn’t immune from the curse like the aunts had long hoped. He had made too much of that relief, maybe, had let it lull him into a false sense of security. He hadn’t understood that Tommy could love him, and he could love Tommy too, more than anything. A colossal fuck up. And now, he knew he had to not be with Tommy, to not love him, somehow.

It took Lovett a few days of panicked worrying to figure out what to do.

By the time they got home from the Beltane celebration, he had a plan. He’d use magic. A spell to summon his true love, who wouldn’t be Tommy.

Lovett stood under the magnolia tree in the greenhouse, his various spell ingredients tossed in haste across the surface of the work bench, and he breathed on the riot of flower petals in the ceramic bowl he held in shaking hands, watching them swirl into the air, eager to take flight. The aunt’s grimoire was snug in its place in the kitchen; he wasn’t using any spell book for this, no, the invocation was spilling from his lips extemporaneously, springing from the deep need within him. _I need to save Tommy’s life, I need the two of us to be happy even though it can’t be just the two of us together._ Maybe there was a spell like this one in the grimoire, somewhere, but those spells were coupled with counter spells, and Lovett needed to work enduring magic. Magic that couldn’t easily be undone in a moment of weakness or regret.

“My true love,” Lovett intoned, “he’ll—ah, have one blue eye and one green.”

The blossoms whirled faster in the bowl. Lovett went to the far end of the greenhouse and threw open the door there, so the trade winds could carry the lifting blossoms out to sea, away from the island, down the coast.

“One blue eye and one green,” he repeated, more confident, “and his favorite shape will be a star. He won’t fear anything except for flying. He’s—a total guy’s guy, president of his fraternity, who—uh—loves football and baseball, but he”—Lovett blushed at this, but it was important to be specific—“he dreams of someone climbing on top of him and holding him down. He can tie a cherry stem with his tongue.”

There was a rustling behind Lovett, probably Alex the Great, which gave him his next idea. “He loves dogs, can practically speak to them.” What else? “He’s kind—and judicious—and patient, and yet, he somehow loves me, as I am.”

The last blossoms flitted from the bowl, up into the sky. That final part of the invocation had been a surprise, but maybe it was the most impossible part of this true love recipe, after all. Someone who could love a person like him, who was okay doing ruthless things, like betraying Tommy’s trust, ruining the wonderful thing they had.

Of course it was Tommy standing behind Lovett, not the cat, listening to him cast the spell. Maybe Lovett had secretly intended it to happen that way; maybe he had known that Tommy would sense he was doing such irrevocable, rupturing magic, would rise from his bed and come to the greenhouse. He always loved watching Lovett do magic. Lovett expected him to yell or to plead, to convince him he was crazy, but he didn’t.

“I had to do it,” Lovett told him, staring at his stricken face with as much defiance as he could muster, having just broken his own heart, “because of the curse.”

After that, Tommy spent the summer out of the house more than in it, running around the Island. He started hanging around with a guy from the mainland who was there vacationing with his family, and one day Lovett caught them making out on the porch and wanted to die from embarrassed, wretched hurt.

It was almost a relief when, at the end of the summer, Tommy left the Island with him.

“You don’t have to go,” he heard himself blurting—stupid, untrue—in the last minute, as Tommy said goodbye, halfway out the window. His boyfriend was waiting in the yard, and he’d already tossed him his backpack.

“Yes, I do,” he said.

Tommy climbing out the window was a symbolic gesture, Lovett knew, because the aunts wouldn’t have stopped him from walking out the front door. “I’m not done with you,” Tommy promised. “I’ll be back, climbing in your window, when you need me.”

“But what about if you need me?” Tommy barely had any money, and despite all their half-serious lessons, he had never learned any magic.

“We’ll write to each other, okay,” Tommy said. He pulled his pocket knife from his jeans and cut his palm, then Lovett’s—Lovett offered his hand so embarrassingly eager, before he could second guess himself, wonder if making a blood pact was dangerous for triggering the curse. They clasped their hands together, and then Tommy kissed him—too sweet, really, to be a goodbye kiss—before resting their foreheads together.

“I have to go. You understand, right? I’m going crazy here, not being able to touch you,” he said. And then, “It’ll always be the two of us.”

Lovett was afraid he was going to cry. “Do you promise?”

“Yeah.”

“Two old crones, like the aunts, tottering around the house together, mixing up potions for what ails you.” Lovett laughed, shakily.

“Exactly. If we can’t be young together, we’re sure as fuck going to grow old together, okay?”

“Okay.”

Tommy pulled away and dropped down from the porch roof into the yard, slung an arm easily around his boyfriend.

Lovett watched them disappear down the drive. Just like that, Tommy was gone.

 

In the days that followed, Lovett thought a lot about the true-love spell he had cast—how he was driven by a manic haste, a desperation—and he wondered what exactly he had wrought, what it had meant, really. It seemed fitting this piece of magic was his swan song, somehow. He had wished for, promised himself—bound himself?—to an impossible man, so his heart would never really be satisfied, settled with anyone, right? Did that mean the love he felt for Tommy wasn’t real, wouldn’t last? That even if they could be together someday, Lovett wouldn’t be fully happy, always yearning for something else, something beyond?

Eventually, he stopped thinking about it, and when he did remember the spell, it seemed like the embarrassing gesture of a teenager, not like true magic. For one thing, Lovett could swear it hadn’t fully worked. He _knew_ he loved Tommy truly, with his whole heart.

 

* *    * *    * *

 

Days followed days; hours chased hours. A whole year went by. Lovett wrote to Tommy—letters sprawling over pages when he meant, damn it, to confine himself to postcards, pages and pages that somehow always made their way to the table by the front door, then the box at the end of the drive, even when Lovett was fairly convinced he’d decided to tear them up to keep them from betraying his heart. Tommy wrote back painstakingly in his cramped, neat print, letters just as long but entirely inscrutable. Letters that likewise refused to be torn to pieces, crumpled in the bin, or soaked through with dew, abandoned on the lawn on a summer night so mild Lovett would have slept under the stars, except it was too bright, and the full moon chased him indoors. Tommy’s letters always made their way under his pillow. He read them and reread them. Tommy had taken a job in politics, and his letters were postmarked from different stops along a senator’s campaign, which Lovett wasn’t really following—God, why would he even need to, not that the aunts even got the local paper, when Tommy went into excruciating detail about each speech and poll and promise? Nothing but the vaguest clues about Tommy’s life beyond work—the people he chose to talk to and laugh with, maybe to love or to fuck. Thoughts like that did more to keep Lovett awake at night than any restlessness from the moon.

Another year passed by, then another. Tommy didn’t come home. He moved further and further afield—one letter would come from Los Angeles, the next from Alaska. It seemed he was always doing different work, mixing with different sorts of people.

Lovett got used to life without him, eventually. It wasn’t that the feelings vanished—the love, the regret, the yearning—but each successive year seemed to weave the space between them more tightly into their story, until Lovett mostly forgot about the _what ifs._ To love Tommy became to love him in absentia—to love the idea of him, the memory of him, the slant of his handwriting on his letters, which were becoming more and more rare. At night, Lovett remembered their bodies together—Tommy’s hair and laughing face golden in the light of the Beltane fire, the giddiness of getting hands on his cock, a fierce kiss on the window sill, half in Lovett’s world, half in the wider world that Tommy would make his own. It had happened a long time ago. At twenty three, Lovett felt very grown up.

Lovett didn’t intend to stop doing magic. It’s not like he believed it would help, not really. He was all too aware of how it hadn’t saved his mother, turning her back on the Island or her birthright. It was more, slowly, he felt less and less compelled to complete spells, to participate in the force, the system, that was ruining his life—that had taken his parents and now had taken Tommy. The aunts watched him carefully, but they didn’t chide him, not about doing magic, anyway.

After Tommy left, Aunt Francis sat Lovett down and said, “There’s always a risk in loving someone.”

Lovett had bristled instantly. “How can you _say_ that? We’re not normal people. If you love me, you’ll help me keep him safe.”

“That spell you did to protect yourself and Tommy—it’s not nothing, Lovett. We just don’t want you to shut yourself away from the world.”

“Isn’t that what the two of you have done?” If he had let himself be catty, he might have continued, _Oh, wait, I guess not, because you professionally meddle in people’s lives._ But he didn’t want to fight; he was barely keeping his head above water already, was barely keeping himself from drowning in sorrow.

He kept thinking about it though—he didn’t want to use his power to muck around with other people’s lives, but he didn’t want to remove himself from the world. Did he have anything other than his magic to offer? In compromise, he spent a week pestering the small shops in town with the most tolerable owners, and by the end of it—maybe out of concern for getting on the wrong side of the Owens, maybe with the Aunts’ intervention, but he wasn’t going to ask—Lovett had three shifts a week at the village bookstore.

So his days began to go by in a predictable if not pleasant rhythm. He would ride his bike to town, delivering packages and messages for the aunts, picking up their groceries, working at the bookstore. He read too much, daydreamed too much, did crossword puzzles and wrote letters to Tommy. In his free time, he helped the aunts with what magical tasks he could tolerate—making sure the garden was teeming with spell ingredients, mixing salves and tinctures, occasionally assisting the aunts with a complicated tarot reading for someone really in trouble.

He and the aunts didn’t speak about Tommy often, but Lovett knew they each felt his absence.

“Sometimes I like to think not of _breaking_ the curse but of working through it in small acts that accumulate, that build into a tapestry, generation after generation,” Aunt Jet told him one day. They were weeding the vegetable garden, and she was clearly in the mood to wax poetic. “Even though we Owens experience more loss in love than most, we choose to keep loving, and that’s the powerful thing. I have to believe it matters. Maybe that’s just me—and you, my love, are certainly able to make up your own mind about it—but I _have_ to believe that choices like your mother’s—or our mother’s—were meaningful, moved the needle just a little back toward the true balance of things.”

“That makes sense,” Lovett said, reluctantly. “But still, for me, I can’t. It’s _Tommy_. Can’t you understand?”

Aunt Jet gave him one of her warm hugs, even though her work gloves were dirty and her hands were full of dandelions and radishes. “Of course I can. You’re not the only one who’s made that choice. I just want you to know it’s not the _only_ choice.”

 

* *    * *    * *

 

The summer Lovett turned twenty three, the detective showed up at the door of Owens House while he was busy in five different ways. The man had the grace to look sheepish—in such a wholesome way, ducking his head, a small smile revealing the gap between his teeth—that Lovett’s complaint died on his lips. Later, he would tell himself that as a sheltered rural gay, he was obviously caught off guard by a tan, handsome stranger showing up on his doorstep, and that was why he didn’t immediately clock the guy for a cop.

Well, not a cop, a detective. Hence the unassuming blue jeans, the oatmeal Henley, and the clean leather shoes. City shoes. Lovett had invited him in before he knew what he was doing. And once the stranger was over the threshold, welcomed, blinking in the dim light of their hall, it was hard to turn back.

“Jonathan Lovett?” he asked, looking around. Even in the entryway, there was much that must have seemed so strange to him—a cluster of broomsticks and old field hockey sticks in the corner, crowding the antique coat stand, which bore a mishmash of Aunt Jet’s garden hats, sequin shawls, and Tommy’s tan leather jacket. Lovett saw that the man’s gaze lingered on Tommy’s jacket, which was stained and scorched here and there on the sleeves by accidents in his greenhouse and over the stove, a faded baseball cap jammed into one large pocket; it was too big for Lovett by a lot, but Lovett couldn’t help wearing it. Too fucking whimsical, but he swore it still smelled like Tommy, his particular sweat and the aftershave he preferred. Then the man stared at the portrait of great great grandmother Maria Owens with her five Scotts terriers. He seemed to take in the messy pile of galoshes and sneakers, a pair of flip flops shaped like watermelon slices, the bags of recycling, and Alex the Great’s scraggly catnip mice.

“Yes, I’m Lovett. Just Lovett, please.”

The stranger wiped his feet again on the hall rug, cleared his throat. He was staring, all of the sudden, not at the mess or the oddities, but at Lovett himself.

Lovett had been reducing blackberries on the back burner of the camp stove he’d set up on his greenhouse work bench. He’d also been sorting the herbs he’d just trimmed from the garden into piles to dry, to take to the kitchen, and to give to the neighbors. He’d been listening to an audiobook and trying to keep Alex the Great off the table, because _of course_ he wanted to be right in the middle of everything. Thoughts about Tommy had been intruding, making it difficult to follow along with the audiobook, but he had been valiantly pushing them away. He’d been _busy_.

So when the knocking at the front door had persisted, he’d turned down the burner and trotted through the greenhouse and living room to the front door, wiping the sap-stickiness of sage from his fingers onto his jeans. He hadn’t taken time to fix his appearance.

Certainly, he looked a mess. He didn’t need to catch sight of himself in the mirror above the sideboard strewn with letters to know his curls were still fly away from the north wind coming in from the bluffs, and his face was red from leaning over the stove. Yet the stranger didn’t hesitate to take his hand.

“Lovett,” he repeated. “I’m a Jonathan too, you know. But I go by Jon. Jon Favreau.”

“You’ll be looking for the aunts, then,” Lovett said, sticking his just-released hand into his pocket to do something with it. “They’ll be tickled to have brought someone all the way from the mainland. What’s it you’re looking for?” He was good at this part, the camp of it, even if he didn’t really do magic anymore. He waggled his eyebrows—“a glimpse into the future?”—dropped his voice—“or beyond the veil? Or maybe there’s something you want? A promotion? Something lost or hidden? Maybe there’s a lucky lady?”

“There isn’t a lady,” the man, _Jon_ , said slowly. Which could mean anything. There was no need for something like that to make Lovett’s heart clunk. “Something lost or hidden’s probably the closest…but…” He pressed his lips together, gave a slight shake of his head. “I’m not looking for your aunts. I’m looking for you. And, well, for him.”

He reached into the inner breast pocket of his light coat and pulled out—a photograph. There was a flash of silver at his belt, not the typical badge, but a star.

Oh. Lovett wasn’t sure what he felt for a sharp moment. Disappointed? Tricked?

Stupid—for another, horrible, stabbing second, he was positive it was going to be a photo of Tommy. Tommy missing, hurt, dead. Tommy in trouble, somehow wanted, on the run from the law.

The detective, Favreau—Lovett wasn’t going to call him _Jon,_ seriously—saw this on his face. Of course he did. He’d be a pretty bad detective if he didn’t. His pretty hazel eyes narrowed in interest. Suspicion?

It wasn’t Tommy in the picture.

Odd. Conventional wisdom was nobody looked good in a mugshot. Not even young Elvis, not really. But this man, he did. He looked like…sex. He had hair as dark and curling as Lovett’s own—and there the similarities stopped entirely. He had an arrogant tilt to his chin, dark stubble on a square jaw, and full lips set in a smirking slant. Lovett had heard the term ‘bedroom eyes’ before, but now he _got it._

“This is your man?” he said, swallowing. “Looks like trouble.”

Favreau’s smile didn’t reach his eyes. “He is.” Then he said, “Look, I’m a detective.”

“Figured that out, yeah.”

He cleared his throat. “For the city of El Paso.”

“Oh, well. You’re a long ways from home, Detective Favreau.”

“Please. Jon,” he said.

Lovett raised his eyebrows.

Favreau sighed. “I’m looking for this man.”

“I haven’t seen him.”

“He’s not a good man,” the detective said, insistent.

“I still haven’t seen him,” Lovett said, “and I don’t know who he is. If you’re looking for our kind of help to solve a cold case, well, it wouldn’t be the first time, but it’s pretty unorthodox, to have come all this way…”

“Your kind of help?” he repeated.

“Ah, didn’t they tell you in the village? We’re witches, me and my aunts. Everyone in my family.”

“But you’re a man,” the detective protested, as if _that_ were the stickiest part of the sentence.

“Well, I’m not a wizard,” Lovett replied.

The detective opened his mouth to argue—thought better of it, possibly remembering his _job_ —and said, “I’m not here so you can—do magic.”

He reached into his inner pocket again. “Are you sure you haven’t seen this man?”

“For the third time, no,” Lovett snapped. _For the third time_ —there should have been something final about the declaration, but, with foreboding, he realized there wasn’t.

Favreau held out something else for him to take, a letter. “Do you recognize this?” he asked, his sandy voice much more gentle. And Lovett didn’t even care that his gentleness was a trap, because he was holding a letter addressed in his own hand to Tommy.

“What?” he heard himself say. “How?”

“This is from you,” the detective said.

Lovett nodded. “I don’t understand.”

“I’m looking for James Angelov, who was last seen in El Paso about two weeks ago. I have a warrant for his arrest, you see, but he cut town. This letter was one of the few things left in his apartment.”

“No,” Lovett said. “You’re mistaken. Tommy wouldn’t—he wouldn’t be around someone like that.”

The absurdity of having this conversation in the hallway hit Lovett, all of a sudden, along with the powerful need to sit down. “You’d better come in…”

Remembering he’d left his compote on the stove, Lovett gestured for the detective to follow him into the greenhouse. He didn’t need to look over his shoulder to feel Favreau gawking at the house’s oddities—not just the clutter of their strange lives, but the weirdness of the house itself, built and refined by so many generations of Owens magic and spite. The carved flowers and peering faces on the lintel and mantle of the fireplace, the old lead-paned glass in the greenhouse, the magnolia tree grown huge and oddly twisted like a giant’s bonsai at its center. Its blossom-laden branches stretched to shelter Lovett’s work station and the considerably neater planter boxes of flowers and herbs that required too much heat to survive their New England garden.

“You have a beautiful house,” the detective said.

Lovett had gone straight to the stove, discouraged to find that the compote had burnt a bit at the bottom of the pan, and he looked up at Favreau’s odd, strained tone.

He was staring up at the magnolia tree with a sort of wondering wistfulness, as if Lovett had grabbed his chest and somehow twisted his heart.

“It’s just a house,” he heard himself say.

“This place”—he gestured around the green glass room—“it’s like something out of a movie. Or a dream, maybe.”

“Mm.” Lovett felt a prickle at the back of his neck. He put his hands down on the table amidst the scraps of lavender there, to ground himself. “You’d better tell me the whole thing,” he said. “You’re looking for this man who was, what, roommates with Tommy?”

Lovett looked at the envelope in his hands. By some magic of the aunts’—or past Owens, he wasn’t sure—the letters they sent always seemed to find their recipients, which was especially handy, given Tommy’s itinerant lifestyle. This letter was addressed to an address in El Paso, though Lovett didn’t remember writing it as such.

“Not roommates,” the detective said. “They’re together, from what I can tell. Your, uh, Tommy has been living with James Angelov for the past three months.”

“Oh,” Lovett said. “I see. Why aren’t you talking to Tommy about this?”

“They’ve both disappeared.”

“Together?” Lovett tried to wrap his head around the idea of his Tommy Vietor on the run from the law. The detective just turned a palm up in an ambivalent gesture. “If you’re looking for him here”—Lovett swallowed—“you should know he left home years ago, and he hasn’t been back since.”

“Did you have a falling out, him and your family? Is it because he’s—”

“No,” Lovett snapped. “It’s not.”

The detective seemed to be waiting.

“Is this an official interrogation? You’re asking some pretty personal questions.”

“An official questioning?” Favreau tried. “An interrogation is more of a…well.” He sighed, then repeated, “James Angelov is a dangerous man. I’m going to do whatever I can to find him, Mr. Lovett, and I—”

“Just Lovett,” he corrected automatically, then winced.

“Lovett. Look, anything helps, alright?”

“Yeah. Got it. A dangerous man.” What the fuck. “Like armed robbery dangerous, con man dangerous? He’s not, like, a murderer, right?”

Favreau opened his mouth, shut it abruptly.

“Oh my God,” Lovett said. “Oh my God.”

“I didn’t come here to frighten you.” All of the sudden Favreau was close, his hand on Lovett’s shoulder. It shouldn’t have felt like anything _more_ than a simple touch of reassurance, at a moment like this, but it did, because Lovett’s brain was _ridiculous_. “Just, when I read your letter…I thought, if he were going to go anywhere to be safe, he’d come here—to you.”

“You _read_ my letter?”

“Well, yeah. It’s evidence.”

“But it was private!”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“What?” Lovett said, stupidly. That wasn’t the response he’d expected.

He hadn’t checked—he’d written so many letters to Tommy—but all of the sudden, with a building unease, he felt sure he knew which letter had gone astray into Jonathan Favreau’s hands. He pulled the paper out of the envelope and unfolded it; it opened easily, primed by extended handling, the edges of the pages softened with wear. Had Tommy…? Or, no, had this man…? “You’ve read it a lot?” he hazarded.

Favreau was flushing. “Like I said, it’s evidence.”

“Right.”

Lovett scanned his own writing, remembering. It started out innocuous enough—the greeting, a rundown of the week on the Island, a funny interaction with the aunts, some griping about the idiocy he dealt with during his shifts at the bookstore. But then—ah, shit. He’d gotten a little wine drunk, a little moon drunk, and had dashed off this note like a madman before going to bed. He’d tried not to think about it too hard in the morning, how it might have toyed with the line he tried to draw between himself and Tommy.

Now this strange man who was looking at Lovett with a disconcerting sort of admiring _hunger_ had read it too.

“It was, ah, I’d never read anything quite like it before,” Favreau murmured, as if to himself, and then proceeded to look even more uncomfortable.

Lovett stared, incredulous. He wasn’t asking for _reviews_ of his personal correspondence, good lord. “So, you know a fair bit about me, huh, detective? What else do you know?”

“I’m sorry,” he stammered. “I think I’ve said enough. I’m not supposed to talk about an open case. Just take your statement, if you’re willing.”

“Right. Well, I’ll just show you out, then.” Lovett needed him to go, Lovett needed to _breathe._ For some reason, Detective Jon Favreau was pulling all the air from the room, in a way that made Lovett worried about his continued sanity. He’d never had a casual meeting—well, if you could call it _that_ —spiral into such a mess of entirely inappropriate, blundering sexual tension. Was sexual tension a trauma response? Hearing Tommy was, what, missing, was more than he could comprehend.

“Listen. I’m staying in the village,” Favreau said at the door. “If you hear anything, call me.” He pressed his card into Lovett’s hands. On the back, written in pencil, was the number of the only motel in town along with the extension for room number three.

 

It was completely Jon Favreau’s fault that Lovett couldn’t sleep. He was a mess the rest of the afternoon and evening. He paced around the house, thought about calling the aunts, picked up the house phone again and again only to slam it back down. What would he say? This detective turned up looking for Tommy, apparently he’s been dating an axe murderer, and now they’ve both disappeared? But don’t worry, have a good rest of your weekend? The aunts were homebodies, but they treasured their rare sabbaticals to visit old friends, members of their coven, and Lovett was loath to disturb them without good reason, especially since they were due home tomorrow.

“You’re being a child,” he told himself. But so what, if yes, yes, he did want someone to fold him in their arms and assure him that things were actually okay. He sat down in the kitchen and cried, wiping tears from his cheeks with the backs of his hands. He grabbed the notepad by the phone and wrote note after note to Tommy, crumpling each one. What could he write, really, besides, _where are you?_

_Call me when you get this. You better be safe, okay?, Thomas Vietor, or God help me. Seriously, call me. Now. I love you. - L_

His hand was shaking, and he could barely print Tommy’s name on the envelope. He walked to the front gate and stuck it in the mail box, shivering. It wasn’t full dark yet, but there was a frigid wind whipping up from the water, and for the first time in as long as he could remember, the familiar view from the yard—the dirt road to town that disappeared into the trees, the scrub brush and wildflower dotted hills rolling toward the cliffs and the sea, the slope down past the garden to the woods and the lake—looked ominous instead of comforting, alien and hostile instead of his domain, as known to him as the back of his hand, as the pattern of freckles across Tommy’s nose.

“Where the fuck are you, Tommy?” he asked the wind.

A rustling in the rosebushes made him jump, but it was only Alex the Great, given up on mousing. He twined around Lovett’s feet, yowling for his dinner.

“You monster,” Lovett said, his body filled with adrenaline like he’d touched a live wire. He felt stupid, jumpy, as he picked up Alex and tucked him under his chin, walked back to the house. Locking the front door carefully, he kicked off the slides he’d put on to walk to the mailbox. He desperately wanted to order a pizza but couldn’t handle waiting around for someone to come up the drive or knock on the door, to startle him, and he wasn’t in the mood to deal with whatever townie ex-schoolmate was out on delivery tonight. Under different circumstances, it might have calmed or amused Lovett, the thought that the delivery guy would probably be more startled by Lovett than Lovett was by him—at school or out and about in the village was one thing, but not even the most ornery bullies dared mess with an Owens on their own territory—but tonight, no, his nerves were too fried.

He made a microwave burrito and ate it over the sink, listening to the soft, scrambling sounds of Alex knocking his bowl across the tile as he devoured his dinner. Then he gave up on the day and took himself upstairs to his garrett and to bed. He tread each set of stairs slowly and deliberately, without looking behind him, because if he started jumping at shadows in this house, he’d never stop. But it really wasn’t until he was in bed under his pile of blankets that he felt more settled. The wind made the house creak something awful, and the chimes in the oak tree were clanging rather than twinkling. Even his old brass bed creaked companionably when he tossed and turned. All in all, it was like being on a ship, and there was too much cacophony to be afraid of any one noise. Then again, he didn’t fear ghosts or spirits, the monster under his bed. He was freaked out because some detective had shown up telling him his best friend had been dating a man who’d maybe killed people. Maybe Lovett was too gullible. Maybe this Favreau guy was just telling a story, running some sort of scam, playing a practical joke. But no, he had Lovett’s letter, which Tommy would not have carelessly left anywhere, no matter how much he’d changed. And Lovett remembered the intensity of Jon Favreau—the tightness of his jaw, his confused wonder at Lovett’s home, and his fresh city shoes. He wasn’t part of some fucked up joke.

All at once, Lovett’s thoughts shifted, keyed up worry becoming, well, keyed up arousal, as he thought about Favreau’s— _alright,_ fuck it, Jon’s—strong jaw. He pushed away the _wow, this is fucked up_ that immediately jumped to mind because he needed some sort of release badly. If this was what his worried, whirling mind was fastening onto, then fine, fucking fine, he would just—he reached down and grabbed his cock, his hand clumsy under the press of the blankets and the waistband of his boxers. He was mostly hard. It had been weird, hadn’t it, how the detective had seemed so struck by Lovett, almost tongue-tied, sliding into his space, touching his shoulder, looking at him almost as if he wanted to…

 _And_ he had seemed ready to be appalled if Lovett told him that the Owens had cast Tommy out for being gay. Lovett might have been born in the city, but he’d become a small town person, and it wasn’t like he’d had much experience with random guys. Even the other young guys in the aunts’ coven had mostly been the same year after year, their preferences and proclivities clear, no guessing or mystique.

 _God, stop thinking,_ he told himself. It didn’t matter if this detective was into guys or into Lovett, anyway. It was just a fantasy, Lovett slipping to his knees, startling Jon so that he backed up into Lovett’s work bench, leaned against it, legs trembling, while Lovett fumbled his fly open and pulled out his cock—thick rather than particularly long, Lovett decided, and leaking, so that Lovett would taste him in a burst of salt as he curled his tongue around his head—not being slow, gentle, but tonguing his slit, teasing the sensitive place beneath he head of his cock ruthlessly, so that he’d course and buck his hips, fucking himself rudely into Lovett’s mouth, his throat, not being able to help himself. And Lovett would choke a little bit.

He licked his hand and went back to really working himself, groaning. Fuck, this was really doing it for him.

The detective had beautiful hands, Lovett had noticed, very different from Lovett’s own small calloused hands, scraped from work in the garden. Smooth, long-fingered, probably dexterous. He probably played piano, had lively, legible handwriting. And he—and he—would close his hands over Lovett’s shoulders to steady himself, squeezing, too strong. Or he’d put his hands in Lovett’s hair, tugging, just like Tommy used to do—fuck, Lovett had loved that—no, no—don’t think about that—think about this stranger, this stranger fucking your mouth with his thick cock—yeah—like he couldn’t help himself, but he’d run his hands over Lovett’s curls, his face, murmuring _is this okay? I need—_ and Lovett would just take him deeper—and right when he was on the edge, he would pull out and tip Lovett’s face back so he could look him in the eyes, like it was fucking romantic, and say _can I?_ And Lovett would say, yes, hoarse, and Jon would groan like that was the hottest thing—and he would jerk himself till he was coming all over Lovett’s face, come mixing with spit there.

Lovett shuddered through his orgasm and lay gasping, staring at his ceiling. Well, fuck, okay. Cool, cool, cool.

Eventually, he wriggled out of his wet boxers and used them to mop up the rest of his come, tossed them into the corner with his dirty laundry and went, on shaking legs, to pull a new pair from his dresser, to wash his hands and splash the sweat from his forehead.

Outside, the wind roared. He felt better, his thoughts slower and more tractable. When he crawled back into bed, he was able to fall asleep immediately.

Sleep wasn’t the oblivion he expected after coming so hard, though. His dreams were troubled with visions of Tommy hurt, dying, fleeing through the woods from a murderer with dark, gorgeous eyes who pinned Lovett to his work bench and sucked his cock until he didn’t feel like himself anymore. The dream became more garbled, and the next thing Lovett knew, he was searching all through the house. He found Tommy reading in his room, but Lovett seemed to be invisible and shook him and shouted at him without really seeing him. The dark eyed, dangerous man came up behind Lovett and laughed and laughed, wrapping his arms around Lovett’s waist, tight and possessive. When he squirmed, he bit Lovett’s ear and then his neck. Somehow—weird dream logic—Lovett became stuck in his body, or maybe he was stuck in Lovett’s, moving him like a puppet while Lovett watched. Tommy could see him then, and he pinned Tommy to the bed and fucked him, and their every touch felt empty, wrong.

 _I love you so much,_ he whispered against Tommy’s mouth, _so much, I think it might kill you._

Lovett woke up, sweating and shaking in the grip of the dream terror. “Fuck.”

He hadn’t done a full spell in so long, but the powerlessness of the dream was unbearable. He pulled on the sweater and pajama pants at the foot of his bed, clattered down to the kitchen, and grabbed the enormous leather grimoire from where it lived on the shelf amidst the cookbooks—safe, here, in the heart of the home. He lit the candles on the counter and the kitchen table with a lighter from the cutlery drawer and impatiently pushed through page after page, until— _there_ —a sequence for scrying.

It was easy, actually, to fall into the rhythm of the spell. Casting protective white light around himself, the kitchen, the house, the yard. Filling a wide, shallow bowl with water, letting the dark surface catch the moon in the bay window. Waiting for the reflection to shatter and morph into something telling on the rippling surface. It was as if all the power he’d denied for years—frittered away in little nothings, mixing tinctures or nurturing plants or helping letters find their way—had been waiting for him, building and building. The rush of magic was intoxicating and undeniably real, and yet the water in the bowl stayed inscrutably blank. Lovett’s mind, though he tried to let it drift out beyond the house and the island to find Tommy, to see him wherever he was, stayed persistently in the kitchen, in the candlelit reality in front of him. He didn’t understand.

There was a banging knock on the door that jarred Lovett from his faltering trance. Holy shit. How many times could Lovett’s body shoot through with adrenaline in a single day? He rose and walked very softly toward the door. The knocking continued. It was very monkey’s paw. _You’ve had a day,_ Lovett told himself, _it’s nothing, someone from the village looking for a magic solution in the middle of the night, something entirely commonplace._ He reached into the cluster of brooms and hockey sticks in the hall for the baseball bat he knew was in there somewhere, which felt, sadly, only half foolish. Then he opened the door.

The bat clattered to the ground. “Tommy?”

He only had a second to take him in—pale face more gaunt than usual, shadows under his eyes, grown into his broad shoulders and muscled arms, he was wearing jeans and an impractically thin sweatshirt, not Island clothing at all, with the hood drawn up over his fair hair—and before Lovett could process the reminder of that night so many years ago when Tommy’s mother had turned up amidst trouble, Tommy’s arms were wrapped around him. He was squeezing Lovett so tightly to his chest, and Lovett was pressing his face into his neck, murmuring, _you’re here, you’re here, you’re okay._

“Lovett,” Tommy gasped. “I’m not okay.”

“What?”

“I’m—I’m in some trouble.”

“I know.”

“The aunts, are they—?”

“Away until tomorrow, but Tommy, I can—”

Tommy drew back, groaned, rubbed his hands over his face. His knuckles were scabbed and swollen, Lovett saw. “I shouldn’t have come here. I don’t want to get you involved in this. I don’t know what the fuck I was thinking.”

“Don’t you dare,” Lovett’s voice was sharp. “Of course I’m involved. I’m always involved if it’s you. If you’re in any danger—”

“Well,” Tommy said. “Not exactly that. I did something really fucked up though.”

“Tell me,” Lovett said.

“It’s really more of a _show me_ situation.”

And that’s how Lovett found himself standing over an honest-to-God dead body in the trunk of an old Buick, carelessly parked outside the front gate. It was the guy from the picture, James Angelov.

Then Lovett found himself helping Tommy drag James Angelov across the lawn, up the front steps, and into the kitchen—which, frankly, felt unhygienic—but Lovett’s candles were still lighting the room in a dim, flickering glow.

“Oh my God,” Lovett couldn’t stop repeating. He fumbled the candles and scrying bowl to the sideboard, and they heaved the body up onto the table with a thump.

“Lovett, you have to listen to me.” Tommy took his shoulders, squeezed him until Lovett met his eyes. “I didn’t kill him.”

“I know. I know. You’re not a murderer. He’s a murderer. Oh my God, Tommy, I thought he’d murdered you.”

“Stop saying that word.” Tommy shook him, gently, in a very controlled way. It helped, actually. “How do you—what?”

“There’s this man, this detective, looking for him, for you. He’s in the village. He came here today.”

“Oh, fuck,” Tommy said.

“I know.”

“James—he’s trouble.” Tommy swallowed. “Was trouble. I should have known not to get so involved. He has this way about him though, and I knew I’d never care, as much as I—” He caught himself.

“Tommy. Focus.”

“I haven’t been sleeping. I’ve been, uh, taking stuff for it, pretty heavy duty pills, and he found them in my bag, took a bunch of them, but he’d already been drinking a lot.”

“Why didn’t you take him to the hospital? Call 911?”

“Well, I was kind of duct taped to the bed frame. Took me a while to get loose when he passed out, and then, uh, he wasn’t breathing.”

“Oh my God.”

“I know. Guy’s a psycho. And really fucking heaving.”

“Oh my G—”

“Lovett!”

“Sorry, sorry. I’m going to throw up. I’m going to have a panic attack. Where’s the phone? We gotta call someone.”

“No! Listen, if I wanted to call someone, I would have called someone on the mainland instead of taking the fucking ferry with a body in my trunk.”

“Okay, but what—”

“Lovett, we need to bring him back.”

“Oh no. That’s not—that’s not even a bad idea. That’s a terrible freaking idea.”

“What? How? How can this get any worse? Don’t you think anything’s better for him than to be like _this?”_

“You remember what the aunts said.” Lovett pulled away from Tommy, needing to pace, to wave his hands around. “It won’t be him. He’ll be some, like, dark, twisted living dead version of himself, and it sounds like he was already bad enough. I don’t want to see the necromancy version of this dude duct taping you to a fucking bed again, Tommy.”

“Calm down.”

“No, you calm down! We bring this guy back—if—if it even works, so he can, what, go straight to jail for committing crimes?”

“Exactly, yes! That is it exactly. We bring him back to life, you call that detective guy, he goes to jail, everything’s good, nobody’s dead. How is that not a better plan?”

Lovett blinked, swallowed. “Oh no,” he said. “When you put it like that…I can’t believe I’m about to do this. I can’t believe you’re convincing me to do this.”

“Yes. Thank you.” Tommy grabbed his hair, his shoulders visibly relaxing. “This is going to be so much better, I promise.”

Lovett flipped through the grimoire, further back than he had before. “Ouch,” he muttered, as the pages cut his index finger. “The book doesn’t want us to go there, and I can see why. These spells are nasty. Okay, here we go. One Monkey’s Paw nightmare coming up. All we need is a toad and some deadly nightshade and, uh, a really big needle.”

“That sounds…doable. Will a pickled toad work?”

“Mmmaybe,” Lovett mused, frowning at the spell. “It’s worth a try. Also, we better tie his hands, just in case.”

 

Twenty minutes later, they were panting over a newly dead Angelov.

“I cannot believe…I thought for a moment…that was going to go differently,” Lovett wheezed, his hands curled protectively around his neck. Angelov had wrung him like a chicken.

Tommy still had a white-knuckle grip on the cast iron frying pan. “Oh my God,” he said. “You want to, uh, call your detective, now?”

Lovett looked between Tommy and the frying pan and the dead man. “Yeah, no.”

 

They buried him beneath the rosebushes across the front lawn, near the gate, because there was no way, Lovett said, that fucker was going anywhere near his garden. It was dirty, sweaty work. By the time they were done and everything was cleaned up, it was dawn. Tommy followed him wordlessly up to his bedroom and crawled into bed with him. Just like old times, Lovett thought, fighting back hysterics. His skin was itching with residual horror and exhaustion, though they had both scrubbed and scrubbed themselves in the shower before going to bed. Lovett wasn’t sure who was supposed to be holding whom, in this situation, and Tommy didn’t seem to be either, so they fell asleep facing each other, knees and faces pressed together, hands clasped, and slept until the afternoon, when the aunts returned to the house, hollering hello up the stairs.

 

“Mph.” Lovett lifted his head. His body was so wrung out and heavy, ready to cede consciousness again despite the interesting shifting warmth beside him, Tommy’s hand on his arm.

“Why are they yelling? We don’t have to go down yet, do we?”

“What are you suggesting?” Lovett rolled over to face him. His mouth was sour with all the ways, despite appearances, things were not right. Not just the nightmare that had finally brought Tommy home, but, like, the curse, their fucking forbidden love. Nothing had changed, even if it would be so easy to pretend… “You shouldn’t be here.”

Tommy’s hands dropped from Lovett’s face, where his fingertips had been tracing the line of Lovett’s jaw, maybe the marks Angelov’s hands had left on his neck. Which hopefully weren’t dark; they’d be horrible to explain to the aunts. “I know,” Tommy said. “I came back, and you got hurt.”

“No, you idiot. I mean, in bed with me. It’s—it’s not safe,” Lovett said helplessly.

Tommy rolled over on top of Lovett, pinning him to the sheets with the ease of a youth spent wrestling him. “What if I don’t stay long? What if we don’t try to be _happy_ together? What about your soulmate, your impossible man”—a testament to the years away that he sounded teasing, not bitter, though his voice cracked a bit on the word _soulmate_ in a way that Lovett didn’t think was just morning rustiness. He stared at Lovett so intensely with his perfectly matching blue, blue eyes.

“I don’t know,” Lovett murmured.

“What if it’s worth it?” Tommy said.

“What if it gets you killed?” Lovett countered.

“What if, for once, it was my decision too, and you didn’t just…” Tommy trailed off, frustration building in his words, and there, that was what Lovett wanted. Anger, not arousal.

“Didn’t what?”

“Make up your mind about us. Push me away.”

“I remember you deciding pretty clearly to put your tongue down Brian’s throat,” Lovett said, “and then to skip town. Think those were your ideas. Didn’t workshop them with me.”

Tommy flopped onto his back with a sigh. “God, you’re impossible.”

“That’s better.” Lovett patted his stomach and climbed out of bed. It took a herculean effort to pull away from Tommy’s warmth and put his bare feet down on the cold wood floor, to get up to face the aunts and the day, as if things were _normal_ and there wasn’t a body out under the shrubbery. But Lovett was pretty used to such efforts by now. If seventeen year old him had managed, twenty three year old him could turn down Tommy’s offer too.

He felt a strong urge to wash again—an unpleasant, confusing mixture of the lingering gross factor of the night before and a desire to find some soothing moments apart from reality in the shower, which was one of his favorite places to think, even aside from how it’d be a good place to wank about his feelings for Tommy—but he wasn’t sure it was a good idea to hang around this part of the house without his clothes, in just a towel. The temptation to throw himself back into bed and peel that sinfully tight undershirt off Tommy to better study all his new, exciting muscles would be too great.

Besides, it was Monday afternoon. He wasn’t a full time necromancer. He had to get to work.

A quick rummage in his dresser, and he’d secured the necessities—a fresh t-shirt and jeans—and grabbed his wallet and work keys. His feet refused to cross the threshold though, when he tried to escape to the bathroom. What if Tommy was gone when he got back?

“I’m going to the village for a few hours,” he said, turning. He felt foolish with his clothes clutched to his chest in a ball. “I, uh, work in the bookstore part time.”

“I know,” Tommy said, and obviously, obviously he knew. Lovett had written to him about all the mundane evolutions of his life. He was watching Lovett, his hands folded behind his head. Lovett tried to surreptitiously dig his nails into his palm to resist the urge to go back to him, to fling his things aside and just jump on him, to pull the blanket over their heads and spend the day pretending they were in a pillow fort, shut away from the world, like those early days together.

“Are you…”

“I’ll be here, ‘Lo.”

Lovett still couldn’t move. He imagined doing something small—what would be the harm?—like if he went back to the bed and leaned over Tommy, said _just kiss me for a little while._

“Jesus, Lovett, when you eye fuck me like that.” Tommy pulled a pillow over his face.

“I wasn’t—”

“Go,” came Tommy’s muffled command.

“Will you be okay with the aunts? Do you want me to tell them—?”

It sounded like Tommy said “I’ll handle it.”

“Fine. I’m going.”

He splashed cold water on his face in the bathroom, not meeting his own eyes, and hastily changed, bolting for the stairs before he could change his mind.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck” he muttered, one fuck for each stair all the way down to the kitchen.

“Darling,” Aunt Jet said, blandly. “Do we have company?”

He’d thought he’d cleaned away the—the evidence of last night, but he saw now what he’d overlooked and realized the impression the mess must have given—the candles burnt down on the table next to a half empty bottle of tequila, two coats thrown over the back of one chair, his and Tommy’s sneakers tossed together at the foot of the stairs.

“No, uh. It’s Tommy. He’s home. I mean, he’s back for a visit.”

“Oh.” Aunt Jet and Aunt Francis exchanged one of their particular looks, and Lovett could see their excitement at the return of their second child warring with concern for their first.

“It’s fine. It’s good,” he lied, in a rush. Then, realizing how that sounded, continued, “I mean, it’s the same—we’re not—we didn’t.” Oh God. “I have to go to the bookstore. Do you need anything from town?”

“Well, if we’re doing dinner all together…” Aunt Jet began.

“Yeah, of course.” Lovett extricated his jacket from Tommy’s and shrugged it on. They’d taken off their coats before they’d started digging in the yard, so it was fine.

“…then you could pick up a few things from the store?”

Movement in the corner of his eye, out the kitchen window. There was a man—there was—no—James Angelov—standing by the gate, in front of the rosebushes. He was staring at Lovett. Lovett jumped back, further from the glass.

“Lovett?”

“Yeah, sure. I can go to the store.”

“Are you alright?”

Lovett looked back into the yard. The man was gone.

Aunt Jet, who had more _sight_ than Aunt Francis, followed Lovett’s gaze, stepping toward the window with a frown. “Is everything alright?” she amended.

“Yeah.” The word came out like a toad’s croak. Lovett cleared this throat. “Can you write down what you want me to get?”

Aunt Francis looked at the clock. “How ‘bout we talk with Tommy when he gets up and call you at the store.”

“Alright.”

Lovett did an admirable job, he thought, of extricating himself from the aunts and getting outdoors as fast as he could. They probably thought he was shaken by Tommy’s sudden return, and they weren’t wrong. Once he found himself in the library-quiet, completely normal humdrum of Monday afternoon at the bookstore, all the thoughts and feelings he was taking moment by moment, one at a time, would invariably swarm him. For now, though—in case Aunt Jet had her eyes on him from the dining room—he tried to walk normally across the lawn. He had been mulching and turning over the rose bed along the gate anyway, so a casual observer would struggle to identify the spot where they had buried Angelov. The ground was as they’d left it in the dawn light. Wood chips spread over the dirt. No lurking mystery man, no Angelov. Obviously. What had Lovett seen? A manifestation of his guilt?

“Maybe I’m just going crazy,” he murmured, tapping one of the deep crimson roses on its full, bobbing face. The whole plant had gone from budding to full bloom during the span of the morning.

With a sense of foreboding, Lovett unlocked his bicycle and rode away.

 

The townspeople were not exactly a highly literary bunch, but luckily, the bookstore trucked on as it always had on the patronage of elderly romance readers and the occasional tourist. It was essentially Mrs. Webb’s vanity project, at this point, but if she was willing to sink money into it year after year, Lovett was happy to spend his afternoons hawking the latest Nora Roberts, chasing away the teenagers who tried to smoke cigarettes on the front steps, and—mostly—reading at the counter with the shop’s slutty tabby cat stretched out beside the cash register, mewling for pets. Their display shelves brimmed with beach reads and cookbooks all year long, and the back shelves were home to heaps of used paperbacks, dusty classics, and library cast offs. Lovett, frankly, loved the place, and he didn’t half mind Mrs. Webb griping that she was on the verge of kicking the bucket and willing the shop to Lovett every time a pipe needed fixing or a shipment of new titles went astray.

“Can’t you use some of your magic powers to drum up some business?” she called, bustling through the shop with the mail and what looked and smelled awfully like a bag of bagels.

“Sure,” Lovett said, dropping his book. When there were over three customers in the shop at once, Mrs. Webb would ask him to use his magic to clear the place out because it was getting too hectic. She was unappeasable like that. But it was alright, because she treated his Owens blood as a joke, not an affliction. He closed his eyes and pointed to his temples like an old-timey cartoon psychic.

The bell on the front door rang. “Well, look at that,” she crowed.

“Oh!” Lovett snapped his eyes open. “I was joking. Besides,” he said, surprised at how his voice sounded a little breathy, “that’s not a customer. I think he’s here to see me.”

Detective Favreau was, indeed, peering around the store, and at the sound of Lovett’s voice, he seemed to brighten.

“A gentleman caller?” Mrs. Webb leaned in.

“No!” Though now that it came to it, that would _almost_ be a less awkward explanation. “He’s a detective.”

“The one from the mainland? It’s a shame,” Mrs. Webb sniffed, hoisting her bagels. “He’s too handsome to be a cop.”

“That’s life,” Lovett exclaimed, making grabby hands for the bagels. “Give me one of those before you run off. C’mon, I know those are day olds. What are you going to do with, like, a dozen day old bagels?”

“Freeze them?”

“Ugh,” Lovett said.

Jon Favreau gave up his pretense of examining one of their bestselling bodice-rippers and leaned on the counter opposite him, just as he was jamming a huge bite of cinnamon raisin bagel into his mouth.

“Good afternoon,” he drawled in that soft voice of his.

Lovett gave him a little wave with his non-bagel hand, still chewing.

“Thought I’d find you here.”

He raised his eyebrows. _At my job? Good work, detective._

“I wanted to ask you a few more questions.”

Lovett waved his hand, like, _go on._

Jon sighed, but for some reason, it looked like he was trying to suppress a smile. “Are you just going to eat an entire cold, dry bagel while I talk to you?”

Lovett was nearly tired of the bit anyway. He swallowed and set the bagel down on top of his copy of _The Chrysalids._ “Do you see a toaster or a choice selection of schmears?”

“Might be a good business strategy to at least offer coffee,” Jon said, looking around. “Looks like you could use some customers.”

“Mm. That’s why I summoned you with my witch powers. You have to buy a book if you’re going to hang around. Maybe two books.”

“If I do, will you answer my questions? A book for a question. That’s a bargain I could strike.”

Lovett shrugged. After last night, that would be a bargain too dear.

“Fine. I’ll get to the point. Are you hiding James Angelov?”

“Not in our house,” Lovett said. “Why would we protect him?”

“I don’t know. I went up to your house about an hour ago, and the first thing I see is an Buick, Texas plates. That’s Angelov’s car. I knock on the door, and who answers it but Thomas Vietor, who you told me you hadn’t seen in years.”

“He got to the Island last night. I wasn’t expecting him.”

“He was alone?”

Functionally, yes. Angelov in the trunk didn’t exactly count as good company. So Lovett nodded. This was awful. He hated lying. It made him sweaty and flushed, and he was positive his interlocutors could read the truth off his face like it was written in giant, neon letters. He had to turn this conversation down a different path, somehow.

“I thought you were going to call me if something turned up,” Jon said.

“Clearly I didn’t need to call. Sounds like you’ve been out and about sleuthing all on your own. And here you are.”

“Why do I get the feeling you’re hiding something?”

 _C’mon,_ Lovett thought. _Something, anything_ to interrupt them.

The phone rang.

He lunged for it, knocking a stack of donation books off the counter. “Sorry, I have to take this. Island Books, hello?”

It was Aunt Jet with the grocery order. Lovett let her talk on and on about the lasagna she wanted to make for dinner, hoping Jon would take the hint and leave as he repeated “mhmm” and “sure,” winding the phone cord around one finger and writing down a long list of lasagna ingredients, as carefully as one would list the ingredients for a spell.

The detective shifted, clearly impatient, but he didn’t go. He picked up a pen and made a little drawing on a pad of sticky notes on the counter. Lovett snorted, surprising himself, when he saw the scraggly image. “I gotta go,” he told Aunt Jet, giving in. “Love you, see you soon.”

To Jon, he said, “Is that supposed to be me?”

“What, you don’t think it’s much of a likeness?”

“No, it’s good. You have some talent. A few years of art school could train that right out of you.”

That earned a smile. “So, what was that, do you moonlight as a personal assistant?”

“Nah, that was my aunt. We’re making dinner tonight, since Tommy’s come home. I have to pick up some stuff from the store.”

“That sounds nice,” Jon said, with a sigh. “I’ve been living off the diner food. You should tell me if there’s anywhere else worth going. At this point I’d do scandalous things for a real taco or some curry takeout.”

“Can’t help you there.” Lovett was pretty sure he’d never had a real taco in his life, by Jon’s estimation. He found himself saying, “You’re welcome to join us. Good food, interesting conversation. You can make sure we’re not hiding James Angelov under the table or in the closet. Promise we won’t go all Hansel and Gretel on you, chop you up and put you in the lasagna.”

“Gross,” Jon said. But he was leaning in, smiling, as if Lovett was, like, asking him to dinner for real. “Are you sure I wouldn’t be imposing?”

“Isn’t it your job to impose?”

“Uh, it’s my job to bring criminals to justice.”

“Wow, you’re lucky I’m a comic book nerd, and you uttering that with a straight face is, despite all odds, weirdly appealing.”

“Appealing?” Jon smiled again. He had a nice smile. That gap between his teeth shouldn’t have been cute, but Lovett kind of wanted to lick it.

“So, uh, that’s a yes?” He scribbled on the edge of his grocery list.

“Yeah.”

“Great. It’s a date,” Lovett said.

 _Great,_ because that’s exactly what they needed—a tense family dinner where he and Tommy would be hiding a giant secret, while giving the detective time to snoop around and low-key interrogate them.

“I’ll let you get back to work then.”

“Likewise.”

“But, uh, first things first.” Jon plunked a paperback down on the counter. “You want to ring me up?”

“We were joking about the book thing, remember? You didn’t even ask me a question. I asked you a question.” _If you wanted to come to dinner._

“What? I have”—he checked his watch—“three hours to kill. And I did ask you a question, if you were hiding Angelov, and you said no.”

“Right.” Lovett rang him up and slid a bookmark inside the book. “Well, enjoy,” he said, with an exaggerated simper.

“See you at seven,” Jon said, with matching syrupy cheer. He tapped the book on the counter and headed out, giving Lovett one last look before he was out the door. 

“That seemed like it went well,” Mrs. Webb said, poking her head out of her office. Lovett scrambled to look busy, like he hadn’t been staring after Jon with confused fascination. “You finagled a date out of Tommy’s mess.”

“How do you even know—?” Lovett gave up. Everyone in the town knew the wrong half of everything.

“Unless it’s all part of your strategy. Seducing him away from all the clues with your masculine wiles.”

“That’s ridiculous. You’re reading too much of the merchandise.”

“Uh huh. What did he buy?”

“What?”

“You sold him a book.”

“As a joke,” Lovett protested.

“It was a lurid romance, wasn’t it?”

“Go away,” Lovett said, and he took another huge bite of his bagel.

 

Jon Favreau met him on the front step of the bookstore, just as he was locking up for the night. He was mild-mannered and assiduous as he wrangled Lovett’s ten speed into the backseat of his rental car, and he trailed after Lovett in the grocery store, obligingly holding the basket while Lovett rifled through the produce bins for the best bunch of spinach, the freshest onions. Lovett hadn’t really thought twice about making Jon tag after him on this errand. Certainly, he’d done the same thing with Tommy a thousand times. But nobody had stared at him and Tommy like this, had they? Or if they had, Lovett had probably chalked it up to their interest in _the witches’ orphans._ Today, Lovett felt scorched by the curious gaze of every island housewife and cashier. He caught Mrs. Gehman blatantly checking out the fit of Jon’s jeans, and Kit, who was rearranging an Oreos display, mimed giving a blowjob behind his back. _I will hex you,_ Lovett mouthed to her, and she went back to her task with alacrity.

“Everything alright?” Jon asked.

“Oh, sure,” Lovett said, tossing boxes of noodles into the basket.

He refused Jon’s money at the register—“what are you doing, you’re _investigating_ us, Jesus”—and insisted on lugging the brown paper bag himself out to the car. They didn’t talk as Jon drove them out of town, up to the bluffs and Owens House. _Is this what a date feels like?_ Lovett wondered. _Even a little bit?_ If so, only in this moment—the dark car, the anticipation—because soon it would be dinner with his family, Tommy newly home, and Lovett would subject a _date_ to that never. No, any pleasure he took from this was wholly illicit—something he could pull out and turn over in his palm much later, after things were okay again—right now he had to focus on getting Detective Jon Favreau out of their hair. So, dinner. Maybe Jon could see them in their strangeness, chalk up any discrepancies to that, and take off, chasing Angelov down the coast. And Lovett could make sense of he and Tommy, could make sense of what had happened to them, and somehow move on.

Jon parked by Angelov’s Buick. It was a stark reminder of the true nature of the night. They walked up toward the house.

Lovett had called to tell Tommy about the new dinner development, of course, as soon as Jon had left the bookstore and Mrs. Webb had stepped out back to smoke.

“Are you _insane?”_ Tommy had hissed—hand cupped around the receiver, Lovett imagined, though he’d obviously pulled the kitchen phone as far as its cord would allow, into the hall.

“It was unavoidable.”

_“Really?”_

“It’ll be better this way.

“What should I tell the aunts?”

“I don’t know! That I’m—bringing some guy to dinner? Some detective I met in town.”

“And they’ll believe that.”

“Sure. You’re going to sulk around all day and dodge their questions, and I’m going to show up with this guy, awkward as fuck. I think they’ll draw adequate conclusions. Enough to keep them busy. The alternative is he officially questions us all, which isn’t really _better.”_

“He’ll still have to do that,” Tommy said. “What conclusions, Lovett?”

“God, Tommy, do I have to spell it out. They’ll _conclude_ that you’re jealous that I’m bringing some guy home.”

“Should I be jealous?”

Lovett paused. “I really don’t think that’s fair, given present circumstances.”

After the call, Lovett reflected that that wasn’t the most helpful response to that question he could have given; he revisited this reflection powerfully on his porch with Jon when Tommy yanked open the front door before Lovett could open it himself. Tommy had clearly landed on a resounding _yes_ in answer to his jealousy question.

“Hey,” he said. He looked very good in tight jeans and a t-shirt. He was glowering at Jon _and_ Lovett, but he gently took the grocery bag from Lovett’s arms. Lovett took a deep breath. If Tommy would have been willing to kiss him that afternoon with Lovett’s assent, he would eat Lovett alive right now, if Lovett wanted. It was—strange. He was so much the person Lovett had grown up with, but in moments, entirely new; Lovett hadn’t seen him like this before.

“Vietor,” Jon said, mildly.

“Favreau,” Tommy replied.

They eyed each other warily. It was kind of hot. Lovett wondered what their earlier interview had been like. He coughed. “Take your coat?” he said to Jon.

Jon made a disapproving little rumble, like Lovett didn’t have to, but he shrugged out of his coat and handed it to Lovett. Lovett tossed both of their coats onto the table. Tommy glared at the coats, like he hated that they were touching.

The night continued pretty much in this vein. The Aunts were charmed by Jon because he was good looking and soft spoken. There was plenty of time to ply him with liquor while the lasagna was assembled and baking, too, which, Lovett assured him, was the New England way. Lovett had thought Jon might be reserved about himself, his personal life, since he was working a case, but he told the aunts about moving to Texas when he was very small, going to college out there, and then working in El Paso. It wasn’t until they’d finished eating, the dishes cleared away to the sink, that the aunts moved on to thornier topics.

“What brings you to the island, detective?” Aunt Francis asked.

“I’m looking for a wanted man, ma’am.”

“You know, people come from all over for our help when there’s something they’ve lost, something they’re missing.”

Jon took a sip of his wine. “Lovett told me that you do, uh, fortune telling.”

“I did _not.”_ Lovett protested.

Aunt Jet smiled. “Well, we do give readings.”

“Should we help you find your wanted man, detective?”

This seemed like a bad idea, but when Lovett met Tommy’s eyes across the table, Tommy said, “Maybe Lovett can read your cards.”

“Maybe Tommy can read them,” Lovett fired back. “He’s better at it than me, actually.”

“That’s not true. I can’t do—” He paused, changed tacks. “You’re the storyteller.”

“But you’re so worldly. And you _get_ people.”

“Boys,” Aunt Francis said. She smiled at Jon, who was looking back and forth between Lovett and Tommy with a sort of perplexed bemusement that Lovett suspected was a front for sharper observation; he looked like he was dying to whip out a notepad and take notes. “They’re not used to having someone to fight over,” she said, leaning toward him as if it was a confidential insight.

Their protests were simultaneous.

“We’re _not—”_

“Aunt Francis!”

“How about this,” Aunt Jet said, and she shuffled her tarot cards with a crisp snap, “it’ll be a family affair. We’ll each pull a card for you. Past, present, future.”

“And one card to point you toward what you seek.” Aunt Francis took the cards from Jet and set them in front of Jon. “Cut the deck.”

He pulled the deck in half and stacked it together again with one elegant, long-fingered hand. Lovett watched, mouth dry. He hadn’t even seen Aunt Jet get up to fetch her cards; this was happening very fast.

To Lovett’s surprise, Tommy reached out and placed the first card. The eight of swords, a blindfolded woman bound and surrounded by swords. The beach she stood on looked like it would soon be subsumed by the tide. “The past,” he said. “That’s you. Hemmed in by sorrows you don’t understand.” He touched the castle atop the cruel, sheer cliff. “A refuge, an answer, has always been out there, but you’ve been so—stuck. You could never get to it.”

Lovett made a small noise that he instantly tried to smother by covering his mouth, propping his head up on his arm, with his mouth pressed against his palm. The hostility that had lurked in Tommy’s voice the whole night, talking to Jon, was gone. That card, too, and Tommy’s explanation of it—it was so _Tommy,_ Tommy as Lovett had known him as a boy, the Tommy who’d put a brave face on climbing out the window, away from his only home. It hurt, a little, in Lovett’s chest, to see Tommy and Jon in sympathy in that card.

Jon sat with his face carefully neutral, his lips pressed together. His hands were wrapped around his drink now. Lovett knew he needed to draw the second card.

He rested his fingers on top of the deck for an agonizing moment. He could flip a card and just _say_ something, interpret the symbols, make a guess. Or he could use his magic, risk saying something too real. But they were _doing_ something together, the four of them, his family, no matter how ridiculous or ill-advised, and he felt, somehow, it would be _wrong_ to not act in good faith. Tommy, his unmagical Tommy, had spoken from the heart. So he closed his eyes, concentrated until he felt a prickling sensation between his eyebrows, then flipped a card, letting his words tumble free of their own volition, like he was in a trance. “The present.” The card wasn’t the Hermit, the Fool, or the Devil. It was the six of swords, a boatman steering his craft from rough waters to calm, two travelers at his bow, heads bowed with care. As in the card before, they were surrounded by swords. “The journey you are on is not what you think it is, not the one you planned. But no matter, you’re in it now, and the only way out is through. You’re beset by uncertainty, but you have a job to do. You’re the boatman here as much as you’re a traveler. It’s not unusual for you to hold others’ lives in your hands, but the stakes here are higher than before. There are two people who need your protection.” 

He pulled his hand back, and Aunt Francis placed the third card, The Lovers, two Adam and Eve like figures smiled down upon by some beneficent seraph. “The future,” she said. “This card might seem obvious. Love. A new relationship. What’s often overlooked is how The Lovers asks you to make a choice. The first part is easy—the connection, the wanting, getting involved. But after, the road forks, and you have to choose whether you’ll go, or whether you’ll stay.”

Aunt Jet set the fourth card above the neat row they had made, closest to Jon. “The three of cups. Your clue.” She winked at him. The card showed three young women, flowers in their hair, raising glasses together in celebration. “It’ll be good, the three of you. If you’re brave enough to give it a try.”

“But—Angelov—I mean, the man I’m out to arrest—all this, uh, doesn’t make any sense.”

“Hmm. Maybe none of us were specific enough.” Aunt Jet smiled. “This criminal, he’s not really the man you’re _seeking,_ is he?”

“Alright,” Lovett said, slamming his hands down on the table with force that surprised him. “Enough. This isn’t funny.”

“Don’t speak to your aunt like that,” Aunt Francis snapped. “She didn’t ask for her _sight_.”

“And I’m the one who asked for the reading,” Jon said, placating, though it wasn’t true. They pretty much foisted it on him.

Lovett took a deep breath, recalling some of the focus he’d had during his portion of the reading. “You’ve had your reading,” he said to Jon. “Take it or leave it, do with it what you will.”

Tommy slapped a hand down on the table, followed by Aunt Jet. _Thunk, thunk._

“There,” Aunt Francis said. She leaned back in her chair and took a sip of her drink. “It’s finished.”

They sat and stared at the cards for a long moment, and then Jon cleared his throat. “I should go. Ms. Owens, Ms. Jet. Thank you for a delicious supper. And for—this.” His gaze seemed to flick one last time to the tarot spread, and then he was up, offering Tommy his hand to shake, heading for the door.

“I’ll walk him out,” Lovett said, and went after him.

Jon was waiting with their coats. Once outside, he didn’t seem disposed to hurry away, so they sat on the porch steps. Lovett looked up at the stars to keep from staring at the rosebushes.

“That was sure something,” Jon said.

“Mm.” _I did tell you,_ Lovett thought, _about the magic._

“You didn’t tell me,” Jon went on, but no, not reading Lovett’s mind, “about you and Tommy.”

“Nothing to tell,” Lovett said.

“Did you—did the two of you kill James Angelov?”

“Oh, a couple of times.” His voice was light, steady. Good.

Jon sighed.

There came a burst of music, raucous laughter drifting from the house to the porch. For a moment, Lovett could almost imagine the house was full to the brim with his aunts’ friends, as it had been for Yule parties in years past. But no, they just got loud together, the aunts, and Tommy loved to egg them on. Lovett remembered nights before Tommy left when they’d sat around the kitchen table, the aunts drinking wine and Tommy and Lovett sneaking just a pour or two of vodka into their root beer floats—not enough to be drunk but enough to feel sneaky and giggly and near grown up—and they’d play Scrabble or rummy, Aunt Jet sometimes cheating preposterously, Aunt Francis less so because she was something of a sharp at cards.

“I should get back in there,” he said. “If you did want to stay…”

Jon shook his head. “I really should go. Let you have some family time.”

Lovett surprised himself—the spike of regret he felt and the fluid way he and Favs stood together, still knocking shoulders, how Lovett seemed to be walking him to the gate as if he were some kind of beau.

The rosebush was going gangbusters, dripping with bright red flowers. Maybe it was a hybrid, too, because some of the branches had begun to creep and twine around the paint-peeling slats of the gate. Lovett didn’t feel quite easy setting his back to it, for some reason. He looked down at his feet, then up at Jon Favreau, who was holding his coat awkwardly; all of the sudden he seemed so close. Lovett had to tip his chin back slightly to look up at his handsome face. 

“Well, thanks for an…interesting night,” Jon said.

“I promised you safe passage through the viper’s den, and here we are.” Lovett put a hand on the gate.

“I didn’t doubt you.”

“Oh?”

Jon sighed. “For the record, I still don’t—I know there’s something you’re not saying.”

“Mm.”

“But I—” He touched the side of Lovett’s face. Moonlight glinted off his silver badge, and Lovett’s fingers brushed the cool metal, as he reached for Jon’s waist. “Lovett—”

It brought him back to himself, a little, tracing the shape, as Jon kissed him. Kept him from melting into it, moaning, because it felt _good,_ and it had been so long. And he hadn’t actually expected it, even after everything. Jon brushed a thumb against the corner of Lovett’s mouth as he pulled back.

“Sorry,” Lovett gasped. “You’re not wrong. But I can’t—right now.” _Ever._

“It’s complicated?” Jon hazarded.

“You could say that. Curse on my family line, that sort of thing.”

Jon laughed—a small, forced laugh like he, too, was trying to be light—but he let Lovett go and stepped back, sliding his hands into his pockets in an obvious attempt to keep himself from reaching for Lovett again, which made Lovett grin with pleasure, not being able to help himself.

“Don’t worry. One kiss, you ought to be alright.”

“I thought kisses were supposed to break curses, not trigger them,” Jon said, the gate shut between them now. He leaned against it, like he’d tempt fate again if Lovett wanted.

“Yeah, not in this family. Goodnight, detective.”

Even in the dark, the red of the roses was bright in his peripheral vision, tugging his attention like blood, and he didn’t linger when Jon crossed the drive and got into his car. He hurried back to the house.

“Lovett! Midnight margaritas!” Aunt Jet cried, as he came into the kitchen. “Where’s your detective?”

“He _said_ he was leaving.”

“But he didn’t look like he wanted to go,” she replied, as if that made any sense.

Tommy was looking at him strangely from across the table, eyes narrowed. He had the best view of the yard, where he was sitting, and a mostly empty margarita glass in front of him as well as an overturned shot glass. Lovett tried not to think about it. He snagged a glass from the tray Aunt Francis set on the table, complete with a full pitcher, tumblers, extra limes, and salt. When he had prepared his drink to his liking, he claimed the chair next to Tommy.

“He’s a good looking guy,” Tommy said, frowning at the table.

“Oh, stop it.”

“I saw the way he looked at you.”

“He looked at you too.”

Tommy opened his mouth to argue, but Lovett was feeling impetuous. “Give me your hand,” he said.

He licked a stripe between Tommy’s forefinger and thumb and pressed salt from the bowl against his wet skin, letting the the extra grains fall between them, devil may care. Tommy’s tequila pour, with his free hand, was shaky. Lovett slammed the proffered shot back without breaking eye contact, then sucked on Tommy’s skin. He had forgotten the lime in there somewhere, but whatever. He turned Tommy’s hand, pressed a quick kiss to his palm. There was an improbable scar there that matched the one bisecting Lovett’s own heart and fate lines. “You promised we’d end up together. Regardless of handsome detectives.”

“It’s more than a promise. It’s a blood oath. Makes it inevitable, right?”

The aunts triumphantly set another pitcher of margaritas at the center of the table, and the mood lightened after that. They kept drinking, the four of them. Lovett wasn’t sure how it started, their happy chatter lapsing into a rousing version of some old song he recognized from the radio.

 

_Maybe I didn't love you_

_Quite as often as I could have_

_And maybe I didn't treat you_

_Quite as good as I should have_

 

_You were always on my mind_

_You were always on my mind_

 

The song was infectious. Sober, Lovett would’ve sworn he didn’t know the words, but here he was, warbling along with Aunt Jet and Aunt Francis. Even Tommy hummed along indulgently for a bar or two, before he stopped, abruptly. The color drained from his face, and from his knuckles, gripping the edge of the table.

“What is it?” Lovett broke off singing to ask.

The aunts were swaying against each other, crooning. “You were always on my mind. You were al-waaays on my mind.” It was supposed to be romantic, Lovett knew, but there was something dirge-like and ominous about the repetition.

“This song. Angelov was—always singing this song,” he hissed at Lovett. “What are we doing? Whose idea was this?”

“I don’t know!” Lovett followed his gaze to the empty tequila bottle. “Where did that tequila come from? We usually don’t—did you bring it?”

“No,” Tommy said. “You’re sure it wasn’t in the liquor cabinet?”

The aunts sang louder, falling against each other laughing, their voices rising in a warbling crescendo. “Youuu were aaalwaaays on my mind. You were always on my mind!”

In the hall, the crash of a broom falling over, onto the hardwood floor.

The Aunts fell silent, Aunt Jet hiccoughing. “We have company,” she said.

Lovett jumped up, ran to the window. “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he swore, his hand on the cold glass. Tommy was beside him.

“No,” he said. “It’s impossible.”

Angelov was standing in the yard, staring at them.

A screech of chairs being pushed back from the table. “Lovett, Tommy,” Aunt Francis said. Lovett whipped around to look at her and Aunt Jet. All their sloshed merriment had vanished. “Who’s that man standing in our yard?”

Lovett turned back to the window. Angelov was still there. Had he come closer? He was so _real,_ the top buttons of his shirt undone, his dark hair falling into his angular face. Those horrible eyes. He was smiling.

“You can see him,” Tommy muttered.

“Who is he?” Aunt Francis repeated, and softer, “What have you done?”

“It’s nothing,” Lovett said. “He’s nobody. Just this guy—while you were gone. It’s all under control.” _Help us,_ he wanted to say. Instead, he couldn’t stop stammering, “It’s nothing.”

“Right,” Aunt Francis said. “Jet?”

“If we must,” Aunt Jet sighed. “But what if they—?”

“It’s an important lesson.” Aunt Francis’s curt tone softened. “And—you feel it, don’t you? We’re outside of this.”

“What?” Lovett asked. “What’s going on?”

“We’re going to leave you boys to it,” Aunt Francis said, lips pursed. She looked angrier than Lovett had ever seen her, he thought. But also, she had that look he recognized from so very few occasions, like when they’d gotten the final news about Lovett’s mother—scared.

“You’re leaving? _Now?_ Where are you going?” Lovett whirled to Tommy. Surely, he’d say something, and the Aunts would listen. But he was staring at the ground, lips pressed together, his hands clenched into fists. The scabs were still there, on his knuckles; Lovett had been overlooking them all night, but he’d meant to have tried a healing spell for them this morning. If he hadn’t been unable to control himself around Tommy, hadn’t bolted. What must the aunts think?

“We’ll stay with someone from the coven,” Aunt Jet said, gently. “You know, dear, your letter will find us when you’ve—”

“When you’ve cleaned up your mess,” Aunt Francis snapped.

“You’re—you’re not taking the spell book, are you?” Lovett blurted, on a rush of panic.

“No.” Aunt Francis’s stare was cutting. “I imagine you’ll need it.”

They stood there, stunned, as the Aunts collected their handbags and coats, brooms and traveling boots. Both were muttering under their breath—Aunt Francis an impressive litany of profanity, Aunt Jet the lilting words of a protection spell.

“Don’t go,” Lovett plead, weak, as they brushed kisses against Tommy’s cheek, then his. “What are we supposed to do?”

“We don’t know,” Aunt Francis said, gruff, and Aunt Jet finished, “but we know you’ll figure it out.”

The house was very, very quiet when they had gone, the _whump_ of the back door shutting behind them.

He wasn’t proud of what happened next. He whirled to Tommy, yelling, “What the fuck! This is all your fault!” Vitriol tumbled out of his mouth in a horrible torrent, but he couldn’t stop. That expression—a _loose tongue_ —he felt it keenly. He couldn’t shut up. “What kind of idiot would date a maniac like Angelov? And you brought him here, to our house. What if we can’t get him to leave, then you’ll, what, have just _ruined_ the only home I have.”

“My fault?” Tommy broke in. “You were the one who did the spell! You probably messed it up, so Angelov turned out—like this. Like, I _asked_ you if we could use the pickled toads, and you said it’d be _fine._ ”

“I messed it up? Says the person who’s literally too stupid to do magic.”

Tommy laughed, bitter. “God, sorry, I’m such a fuck up, ruining _your_ home. I can’t believe I ever thought about coming back to this dump. I guess you aren’t anything to me, after all, just some people who took me in for a while. Guess I am pretty stupid to have thought differently.”

“I wish you hadn’t come back,” Lovett yelled.

Woah, what were they _saying?_ He and Tommy gaped at each other, and Lovett could no longer bear to duke this out; it didn’t feel right, Jimmy Angelov’s tequila bleeding acrimony through his blood, urging him to say the most wretched things, things that would gut Tommy. Or—worse—maybe it wasn’t Angelov at all, and he was just horrible, at his core.

“Where are you going?” Tommy yelled, as Lovett tromped toward the door.

“I’m leaving!”

_“Where?”_

The yard was empty. What would he have done if Angelov was there, blocking the way? No matter. Lovett ran to the gate, slipping on the dew-damp grass as a toad leapt into his way. Tommy didn’t call after him. Of course he didn’t, Lovett thought bitterly.

If his head had been clearer, the ride to the village in the dark, without even his feeble bike lights, would have been harrowing; his present circumstances seemed to have instantly recalibrated his idea of _danger,_ however, and he found himself at the motel before he knew it, knocking on the door to room three, out of breath but no worse for the ride.

Jon must have seen him through the peekhole, because he opened the door wide, without reservations. He had taken the time to pick up his gun but not put on a shirt. Lovett swallowed. He had—a lot of muscles.

“Lovett? What’s wrong?”

He meant to say _something,_ but he just—giggled, kind of hysterically. Everything was wrong. Jon had a six pack, and _that_ wasn’t wrong. But pretty much everything else was _wrong, bad, not good, terrible…_ Jon took his arm and pulled him into the room, indicated Lovett should sit on the bed. There was a mess of papers and clothes covering the room’s small table and chairs, Lovett saw, as Jon put his gun down on the nightstand and filled one of the plastic motel glasses with water.

“Here,” he said, handing Lovett the water and sitting beside him. “Sorry, it’s a mess in here. I wasn’t expecting company.”

Lovett drained the glass, set it aside. “I don’t mind,” he said, looking at Jon. They were sitting very close, their knees nearly touching. He licked his lips.

“Oh, fuck, this is so unprofessional,” Jon said, but he was reaching for Lovett, grabbing his hips tightly as Lovett clambered into his lap, straddling him. Then they were kissing, Lovett squirming and licking into Jon’s mouth, chasing his tongue. The only thing that had changed over the past few hours was Lovett’s state of mind, but seriously, fuck it, this was good, this was _fine,_ and it felt right, the adrenaline that had been amping him up for, like, over a day now showing up for _this,_ Jon’s tongue in his mouth, instead of for moments of helplessness and fear.

But Jon pulled back. Oh, Lovett was guilty, guilty, guilty. He could taste Lovett’s guilt on his mouth, maybe.

“You’re drunk,” Jon said, touching his lower lip. “You taste like…”

“Tequila. James Angelov’s tequila.”

Jon stiffened at the name.

Shit, Lovett _was_ pretty drunk, wasn’t he? The cool air in his face as he’d biked down the hill into town had felt sobering at the time, but now that he was sitting, the room was wobbling, tipping on an uncertain axis. “Can I—can I stay here with you tonight?”

“Why did you leave your house, Lovett?”

“S’haunted,” Lovett said promptly. He frowned. “Tommy and I had a fight.” Jon looked like he was trying to choose between a hundred different questions. “Look,” Lovett said, “tomorrow, I’ll talk. I’ll tell you—everything. But”—he laughed, then hiccoughed—“you won’t believe me.”

Jon sucked in a breath. “Lovett, you should get a lawyer before you talk to me.”

“I don’t want a lawyer. A lawyer will think I’m crazy. But you—you don’t think I’m crazy, do you?”

“Mm. I should. Witches and magic. Fortune telling cards and men who disappear off the face of the earth.” Jon stroked his hand up and down Lovett’s side, over his ribs, and it wasn’t ticklish at all; it felt calming. “This island, you and your—Tommy, you must be getting under my skin, the fact that I could entertain for even a moment that any of it’s real.” He shook his head. “It’s like you’ve cast a spell on me.”

Lovett slumped against him, head on his shoulder, leaning forward to press his face against Jon’s neck with a relieved sigh at getting to breathe in the smell of his skin and his sweat. “Don’t say that. That would be very bad magic. And I—I don’t do that kind of magic—usually—I don’t ever want to hurt anybody, you know? I—”

“Shh,” Jon said. “Hey, shh. You’re okay. You’re safe here with me.” He wrapped his arms around Lovett.

“I’m not,” Lovett said, “but it’s nice to pretend I am.”

They were quiet for a while.

“Listen,” Lovett said finally. “You should get your tape recorder. I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep until I get some of this off my chest.”

“I can’t take your statement while you’re drunk, Lovett. I shouldn’t.”

“Then take my statement tomorrow, or whatever. Let me just—let me just tell you about us. About me.”

Jon sighed, then shifted Lovett against him so he could lean over and pick up his tape recorder, which was beside his gun. “Are you comfortable?”

“Let me just…” Reluctantly, Lovett climbed off Jon’s lap and slouched beside him in the bed, against the headboard. When Jon flicked on the tape recorder, he talked and talked, animated by his usual wild energy as he told Jon about his childhood, growing up with the aunts and Tommy, doing magic.

He didn’t get to the part about Angelov before he fell asleep.

 

Several hours had passed when he woke up with a start; the large red numbers of the digital clock were bright and accusing in his face. Oh. He was in the motel room, sprawling over two thirds of Jon’s bed. He got up, stumbled to the bathroom, splashed water on his face. God, his mouth tasted like rot. He squished some of Jon’s toothpaste onto his finger and smushed it around his teeth and tongue, rinsing and repeating until his own breath didn’t make him want to throw up. No more tequila, ever again. Finally, he staggered back to the bed. Jon was lying on his side, looking at him, when Lovett lay down.

“Why are you awake? It’s so early.”

“I slept a little. Heard you get up. How’re you feeling?”

“Sober,” Lovett said. “Embarrassed about last night.”

“Don’t be.”

They moved toward each other. Hard to say whose idea it was this time, but the draw was magnetic. Lovett needed to touch his skin, and Jon seemed equally compelled to bury his hands in Lovett’s hair.

“Fuck, we shouldn’t.”

“Because of—your family curse?”

“Yeah, and I’m supposed to be talking to you—telling you—everything.”

“I know, I know. I just—want you so much. You have no idea how hard it was to stop touching you last night.”

It was getting too easy, to stop thinking about the curse. He reached for Jon, and for a while, he stopped thinking about anything but Jon’s smooth, tan skin and his strong arms, his taste and the sure way his beautiful hands curved around Lovett’s cock.

They must have both fallen asleep again, after. The next time Lovett opened his eyes, lifting his head from Jon’s chest, the room was flooded with late morning light.

“Hey,” Jon said, tugging Lovett close, “Good morning.” Then he rolled them so Lovett’s back hit the mattress and Jon could lean over him to press a kiss to the corner of his mouth. Lovett was still blinking awake, his thoughts muzzy in a slow, happy way; the uninhibited nature of the moment, Jon so close, that had to be why Lovett could suddenly see that Jon’s eyes weren’t a mottled hazel; he clearly had one blue eye and one green.

“Your eyes. They’re different colors.”

“You didn’t notice?” Jon looked like he was trying to smile but had picked up on Lovett’s unease. “It’s just a genetic abnormality. It’s, uh, usually the first thing people notice about me.”

“I guess I was blinded by your handsome face.” 

Jon smiled that too sweet, gap tooth smile, and Lovett’s heart still managed to lurch, beneath a rising tide of panic. He pulled his hand away when Jon went to take it. Maybe he as wrong. His limbs felt heavy, his thoughts tangled, waking from deep, restful sleep and the release Jon had wrung from him.

He cleared his throat. “Let me guess. Your favorite shape, you’d say it was a star, right? The shape of your badge. You live and breathe your job.”

“Haven’t really thought about my favorite shape since kindergarten, but yeah, I suppose so.”

“And you told my aunts last night that you were, like, the flip cup champion of UT.”

“Just of Pi Kappa Phi. There were some guys from the other frats—”

“And the past few years—the past five years—you’ve felt a longing you can’t explain. It doesn’t go away when you go out on dates, when you take someone home. It’s like there’s someone out there waiting for you, someone right for you, if only you could find them.”

Jon was blushing. “Lovett, what are you doing? I didn’t ask you to tell my fortune again.”

“I’m three for three, right?”

“Yeah, but—”

Lovett propelled himself up, scrambled for his socks, his pants. God, he was getting really tired of fleeing the beds of handsome men in a clawing panic. “I have to go,” he said.

“Why?”

“I just do.”

“Lovett, wait. What’s wrong? Did I do something that upset you?”

He finished lacing his sneakers, pulling on his sweatshirt. He knelt on the bed and grabbed Jon’s shoulders. “I am truly sorry for ruining your life.”

“What?”

“With the—the sex and the making you fall in love with me. The spell I cast on you.”

“Uh.”

“I honestly didn’t mean to do it, and I’m going to fix it, okay?”

Jon was calling after him, but what could he do, chase after Lovett in his underwear? Lovett shut the motel door behind him and hurried toward the street, where he’d locked his bicycle.

There was an empty soda can on the sidewalk, and he kicked it, then kicked it again, till it skittered off the cement and into the grass. “An impossible man, right.” He wanted to scream at his younger self. Amazing job. What’s so impossible about _heterochromia iridum,_ you fucking asshole? Couldn’t you have wished for a guy with wings? A guy from literal fucking outer space? You conjured some cop from Texas and made him fall in love with you. Now he’s doomed to be hit by a bus or something. Fucking great job.

Lovett pedaled faster and faster out of town so he could take the biggest hill up to the house with some speed. He was sweating, legs burning, by the time he reached the gate; beyond the crunch of his tires over the crushed seashell driveway, everything was very quiet on the bluff, even the swarm of toads that now covered the lawn. Lovett tossed his bike down and took the porch stairs at a run. The house was dark. No chance that the aunts had relented then. He tore through the living room and into the greenhouse. The muggy air was almost too much, he felt so overheated. He’d get some water—he just needed to—there had to be some way to reverse the spell—to undo an enchantment, yes, repel an unwanted lover, maybe, there was a whole section Lovett could skim. He laid his hands on his work bench to steady himself and then whirled back toward the kitchen. The aunts had promised to leave the grimoire; he hadn’t looked yet, but they wouldn’t have lied—

“Tommy?”

Lovett nearly collided with him, his approach had been so quiet. He was looking at Lovett strangely, his head tilted, those blue eyes smoldering. Still in the same clothes from last night, like he hadn’t slept. Something made Lovett take a step back, and then another. Tommy grinned. Lovett had never seen his face stretch like that before—a dimpling yet sharklike grin. His eyes were hooded.

“Tommy, you’re freaking me out,” he said, stepping back again. His feet had a mind of their own suddenly. He took a deep breath, tried to get himself together. “I’m sorry about last night. I know we need to talk, but there’s something I need to do—Jon—I mean, the detective, I did some magic—I didn’t mean to—” Oh God, how was he going to tell Tommy that _Jon_ was the man he’d summoned when he’d cast the true love spell to tear them apart?

“You’re sorry,” Tommy rasped, savoring the sounds slowly. Was he high? He cupped Lovett’s face and ran one hand down his throat, his chest, and his large palm splayed possessively at his waist—Lovett shivered. “Why don’t you show me how sorry you are, sugar. Make it up to me.”

“We can’t,” Lovett whispered. He was trying to find—something in Tommy’s usually patient, often wry blue eyes, but it wasn’t there. For such a hot look Tommy was giving him, Lovett felt so cold.

“No?” Tommy said, as he squirmed. “Too busy thinking about your detective.” Now his voice became deadly. “Favreau. If you were mine, I’d kill you for looking at another man. But for looking at a pig like Favreau…I’d have to hurt you a bit, sweetheart…”

“Aw, fuck,” Lovett said, and then Angelov was kissing him.

Lovett jerked away and took off at a run through the house, Tommy’s too-heavy footsteps pounding after him. “Tommy!” he shouted, “How dare you get possessed”—he panted, narrowly avoided slipping on the edge of a rug—“by that fucker!”

Oh God, he was such a selfish idiot; how could he have left Tommy alone in the house with his murderous ex-boyfriend menacing the premises? He’d been drunk, he’d been affected by Angelov’s poisonous presence, he _hadn’t_ been thinking. No excuse.

Lovett should have gone out the front door, but he didn’t, the moment was gone, and Tommy—no, Angelov—careened to cut off any escape through the kitchen and out the mudroom back door. Lovett began to run up the stairs. Normally, there was no way he could outrun Tommy. The difference in their strides was substantial, and Tommy was far more fit than him, but Angelov’s use of his body seemed to be imperfect. He tripped and knocked into the railing. Lovett managed to reach his garrett room ahead of him—whatever good it would do—because, yeah, unless he could turn into a bird and go out the window, he was trapped.

“Fuck, fuck fuck,” Lovett muttered, glancing around wildly for something that could do as a weapon—a broom? A hockey stick? All downstairs. What was he going to do, throw a shoe at Angelov? Besides, it wouldn’t hurt Angelov, just Tommy’s body. Lovett had to figure out how to send him away, bring Tommy back, but all he could think was _fuck, fuck, fuck._ He reached, but there was no ready invocation, no magic words to stop Angelov from advancing on him, his hands coming up like he wanted to grab Lovett’s neck again.

That was when he saw Detective Jon Favreau in the doorway, gun drawn. Lovett’s heart was beating so loud, he wasn’t surprised he hadn’t heard him on the stairs.

“Let him go.” Jon was pointing his gun at—oh fuck—Tommy.

“Don’t,” Lovett yelled, “don’t hurt him. It’s not Tommy.”

“What?”

How could he explain so that Jon would believe him? But then Tommy—Angelov—laughed an unfamiliar laugh, turning slowly to face the detective, and Jon started. It was clear he’d heard that laugh before, and not from Tommy.

“Favreau,” Angelov rasped, contorting Tommy’s features.

“…Angelov?”

Lovett shuddered at the name—it felt bad to _say_ it, like they were allowing him to be real, giving him more power—but it was as if Jon had called him forth in his true form, because _something_ began to peel away from Tommy. At first it looked like a heat shimmer above a summer road, but then it darkened, like smoke, and began to coalesce into a body-like shape, Jimmy Angelov’s height and build, insouciant slouch and wild hair. Tommy slumped to the ground, a marionette-with-cut-strings collapse that would have looked funny under other circumstances. Lovett barely caught him—well, he didn’t really catch him, but he managed to grab him before his head smacked on the ground. He was so heavy, he couldn’t drag him far, but it felt imperative to get him as far from Angelov as possible. Jon ran to his side to help.

“Oh holy fuck.”

“Unholy fuck,” Lovett muttered. “You seem like a good Catholic boy. Can you help out with an exorcism?”

“Um, I never even got confirmed, but I, uh—”

“I’m joking. We’re going to use magic.”

“Oh.”

“I’m not joking about needing your help.”

They lay Tommy down; they’d managed to get him across the room, near the couch where Lovett liked to read.

“I’m not joking about offering it.” Jon reached over and took Lovett’s hand. “Lovett, when you left the morning, I wanted to tell you, I don’t care if—”

A book hit the wall just above Lovett’s head and exploded into a mess of paper. They both threw themselves down, shielding Tommy, their arms in front of their faces. As Angelov continued to take form in the room, all of Lovett’s clothes, books, and trinkets were swept up, whirling around him like a cyclone of projectiles.

“Right,” Lovett said, yanking Jon behind couch, which they crouched behind, “maybe not the time for, uh, whatever this is.”

Jon had a paper cut on his cheek. Miraculously, he hadn’t run from the room screaming; he was looking at Lovett with admirable calm, like, sure, the an evil spirit manifesting was bad, but the real evil was he hadn’t fully confessed his feelings to Lovett. How was he even real? _He’s not, this isn’t,_ Lovett thought, _he’s under the spell you cast._

“Okay, so what do we do?” Jon said.

“What _I_ was going to tell you this morning is that Tommy and I might have cast a spell to bring Angelov back to life, and now he’s haunting us.”

“So you did kill him.”

“No! He overdosed. On tequila and Tommy’s sleeping pills. We just thought—maybe it would be better if he was alive, so he could be brought to justice.”

Jon looked so relieved he almost smiled. But then he seemed to catch himself, and he frowned out at the coalescing spirit. “You did this? Made him like this?”

“I didn’t mean to do this! I didn’t know he’d get all”—he fluttered his hand at Angelov’s shadowy form—“spooky. But if you want to arrest me, have at it, I guess, just let me figure this out and get this asshole away from Tommy first.”

“I’m not going to arrest you,” Jon said, sounding strangled. “I’m going to investigate. But if what you’re saying is true—”

“No offense, but this isn’t exactly a great time to have a tete-a-tete on how you’re going to file your paperwork.”

Horribly, Angelov had now taken shape, like he had on the lawn. Not quite solid, if you squinted, but close enough. He moved toward them, slowly, and before Lovett could figure out a plan, he was descending upon them. In his rush to scramble in front of Tommy—he’d protect him, no matter what—he didn’t realize Jon had sprung up to confront Angelov.

“Jon!” Lovett protested, feeling torn about where he should be, what he should do.

Angelov looked utterly delighted at Jon’s gumption, grinning a cat-who-caught-the-canary grin and raising his fists. Jon punched him without effect, but when Angelov struck at him, he stumbled backwards.

“Oh fuck,” Lovett said, on his feet, but he wasn’t going to be fast enough, Angelov was bending over Jon, reaching for him.

Jon reached for his belt—if he’d been unable to hit him, shooting him surely wouldn’t do any good—but he grabbed his badge, not his gun, brandishing the silver star. Angelov’s hand hit the star and he gave a banshee screech, his form wavering, and then he collapsed like sand.

“No, fuck!” Lovett leapt back to Tommy’s side, but it was no good, Tommy convulsed. “Careful,” he called to Jon. “Angelov’s not gone.”

Jon swatted another book out of the air as he knelt on the other side of Tommy. “I gathered that.”

Lovett took a deep breath. Composure was itself a kind of charm in situations like these. “You did that. You made him go away.”

“I don’t know how.”

“Your star. Uh, your badge. It means something to you. It’s a talisman. That was smart.”

“If you say so. Sorry, I’m still trying to wrap my head around the whole magic is real thing,” Jon muttered. “This is sort of normal for you, right? For a witch? You’re going to use your magic, you can fix this. No big deal.”

“No big deal?” Lovett gaped. He appreciated the confidence, but it was sorely misplaced. “I’m sorry, I’m not some sort of—Ghostbuster. I’ve never done anything like this before.”

“You brought him back, you can banish him. I believe in you.”

Lovett opened his mouth, then shut it. Jon’s belief, that was something. He’d believed in the power of the silver star on his badge, and it’d put Angelov on his heels; he believed in Lovett. Maybe Lovett could work with that. He sat forward, putting a hand on Tommy’s chest. “I think he’s coming to.”

“What do we do? Is it still Angelov?”

“Lovett,” Tommy sighed. “Sorry. This got…fucked up.” He seemed like he was struggling to move his arm, to take Lovett’s hand, but he was weak, couldn’t quite do it. Lovett moved to lace their fingers together, as he gave a grunt of frustration.

“No, he’s different,” Lovett told Jon. “It’s him, I think, right now.” He could tell, the way Tommy moved, the tone of his voice. He knew him so well. “I need to do the spell—some spell—before Angelov rears his ugly head again, but I—I can’t do this by myself. Maybe, I could send a message to the aunts, and the three of us together, we could—”

“Lovett, I don’t think we have time for that,” Jon said.

“Well, what am I supposed to do?”

“Use me,” Jon said. “I can help. And maybe Tommy?”

“Tommy’s like barely conscious!”

“No, I can do it,” Tommy said, his voice stronger now. “I can help.”

“The three of us—that’s good, right?” Jon said. “You told me, that thing about your aunts and your mom—the three of them being a stable shape, an, an auspicious shape—”

“That’s different. They’re witches. They had the same blood.”

“It’s not _that_ different,” Tommy said. “You and I, we have the same blood.” He reached out and took Lovett’s hand, pressed his thumb against the scar from their blood oath. “And you and him, maybe it’s not blood, but you’ve shared some fluids.”

“Excuse me, what?”

Tommy smiled a crooked smile, like he was too exhausted to lift more than one corner of his mouth. “I know how you look after you’ve gotten some, Lovett.”

It was no time for modesty, but he seemed to be blushing anyway. God, blushing was a stupid reflex.“I’ll have you know—”

“It’s okay,” Tommy said.

And Lovett bit his tongue, thankful he hadn’t rushed on into some bad joke about being perfectly capable of having safe sex, because Tommy was being genuine. If Tommy was offering him that, after everything that had happened last night, he could make an effort to be genuine too.

“It’s not the same, but it’s not nothing,” Tommy went on, stubborn and insistent as always, even with his evil ex-boyfriend inside him, trying to snuff the light out of him.

“It could work?” Jon said. “That tarot reading you gave me…your aunts did say…the three of us, maybe…”

“You’re overlooking the fact that the two of you _can’t do magic,”_ Lovett snapped.

“One, doesn’t matter, if this is the best we’ve got, we’re going with it,” Tommy said. “And two, you don’t know that.”

“What! Tommy, we spent hours working on spells together, me trying to teach you, and—“

“I never really tried,” Tommy argued, “it was just because I wanted to be with you, spend time with you.”

“That’s really sweet, but I don’t see what—”

“I don’t think I believed I could. You believed in me, but you were obviously special in a way I wasn’t. You were an Owens, and I wasn’t. But right now, I fully believe we could help you do this. Just let us try to help, okay.”

Lovett exhaled loudly, threw up his hands. “Alright.”

Tommy turned his head toward Jon and said, “Kiss me.”

“Um, what?” Lovett said.

“We should, ah, probably close the circle.” Tommy raised his eyebrows, like he was daring Jon.

“Makes sense to me,” Jon said, and he bent to kiss Tommy.

Lovett sat back on his heels. There was probably something he should be doing—like, to ready the spell he would cast to banish Angelov—but it also seemed important to maybe just watch for a moment. Then he snapped out of it. “Do that again!” he told Jon, pointing at him. “Stay with him. I’ve got to get the grimoire.”

He ran downstairs, tucked the giant book under one arm. It sprang from the shelf into his hands easily, and he thought _yes_. He thought _maybe._ He could do this. Grabbing a bag, he swept a mess of spell ingredients from Aunt Jet’s workstation, jars and bottles and flower cuttings, just in case, though he knew this magic would be like the true love spell he’d cast years before—a sort of inspired improvisation. He did his best work that way, it seemed, which was frustrating but fine. He didn’t choose his genius; genius chose him.

When he got back upstairs, Tommy was still himself in the garret room. Lovett passed the grimoire to Jon with shaking hands. “This is the spell we need,” he said. “It’s a starting place we’re going to build on, together. So for starters, hold this, and tell me what to do.”

 

Afterward—after Tommy had writhed and writhed, and Lovett had gone on, reversing the steps of the spell that had brought Angelov back to life, and then _more,_ reaching and sifting Tommy’s spirit from Angelov’s, which wasn’t hard at all—though Tommy shook and Lovett feared he might _die—_ afterward, Tommy was himself again. Jon alternately held the spell book and their hands as needed, his voice echoing Lovett’s invocations. Afterward—after they had told Angelov to _fuck off_ until he fractured into a confetti burst of light—the three of them fell asleep in the chaos and flotsam of Lovett’s wrecked bedroom. Jon helped Lovett collect pillows and quilts thrown asunder, and they arranged the bedding around where Tommy sprawled exhausted. It reminded Lovett of the pillow forts they had made as kids, not just because of its haphazard arrangement, but because it felt safe.

 

Lovett was the last to wake up in the morning. He tried not to panic that he was alone, drooling on his pillow in the middle of a colossal mess, because the light in the room told him that it was very late, and there were voices coming from downstairs. He found Jon and Tommy having coffee together in the kitchen, a startlingly normal scene that made his heart hurt. When he sat down, Tommy put a cup in front of him, clasped his shoulder, and pointedly left the room. So it was time for him to sort things with Jon, then. He’d thought he’d maybe have a moment to think through what had happened last night—with the three of them, not the exorcism.

“You’re really not going to arrest us?” Lovett asked Jon. It seemed a safe opening.

“I’m not. Don’t talk to me about paperwork this early. Lovett,” he said, searching Lovett’s face. “What happens now?”

“What do you mean?” he said, stirring his coffee, a poor evasive maneuver.

“You know what I mean. You and me. Or, you, me, and Tommy.” He cleared his throat. “Whatever works.”

Lovett’s head spun at the suggestion. But no. It was impossible. “What happens now is you leave. You go home to Texas, detective.”

“Is that what you want?”

It was the only sane thing to want. “If you stayed with me, I’d never know if it was because of the spell, and you wouldn’t either.”

“This spell you keep talking about…”

“I cast it five years ago. It was supposed to summon my, uh, true love.” He couldn’t meet Jon’s eyes. Thank God he had this coffee. The cream swirled on its surface, as cloudy as Lovett’s thoughts, and he studied the shapes it made as if they were terribly fascinating. “But I didn’t want to fall in love, because of the curse. Like I told you, any man who loves an Owens witch usually dies. So I made up all these traits that my true love would have, so he wouldn’t be real.”

“Oh.”

“You weren’t supposed to be real.”

“I’m…sorry?” Jon said softly. “But Lovett, I am. And I don’t think some spell is controlling what I think, or what I feel.”

“But how could we ever be sure? I think…I wonder…last night, with the three of us, I felt like something shifted with the curse. Maybe, if you go, the way you feel will change too. You won’t want…this.” He looked up at Jon. He didn’t want to plead, but he had to make him understand.

“Okay. So, you just want me to ignore how I feel, how things have been between us. I’ll just keep doing what I’m doing, and you’ll do what you do, and we’ll see where we end up? That’s what you want? I’ll head back to Texas, and you—the two of you—will stay here.”

“It’s not like that. Me and Tommy, we go way back.”

“So I’ve seen. Don’t know why I didn’t see it before, but that’s how the story goes, isn’t it? You and him, growing up together, falling in love. You break your curse, and you can be together. Not really room for anyone else, is there?”

“There was, though,” Lovett whispered. “You and I, we made room.”

Jon shook his head, mouth twisted in a bitter smile that didn’t suit him. “But you’re telling me it didn’t mean anything. That it’s not real. Which is it?”

Jon had him there. _It meant something to me,_ he wanted to say, but he wasn’t being fair. Anyway, he was good at this, biting his tongue, holding a boundary, when he wanted so much to tear it down. It wasn’t that hard, really, to not say anything. Stare at his feet, breathe in and out. Wait.

He was very good at waiting. Eventually, Jon heaved a sigh, got up, and walked away.

“I wished for you too, you know,” he said at the door. “And I don’t believe in curses, Lovett. I believe in good luck—that we found each other—but beyond that, I think the important things in life are up to us.”

 

He left that afternoon, to make the five o’clock ferry. In the intervening hours, he was very professional. He took their statements, got in his car, and then he was gone. He left the Buick.

“Might have some trouble with the title,” he said to Tommy. “But I’ll see if there’s anything I can do.”

Tommy thanked him. Lovett tried not to notice how Tommy kept giving him these looks like he was crazy, right up until Jon drove away.

There wasn’t time for regrets. They’d only just finished putting the house to rights when the aunts returned, and there was a lot to talk about, to explain. Then Tommy took him to bed—just to sleep, the first night, because they were still exhausted. The second night though—well.

So, no, Lovett didn’t _mope_ that Jon Favreau had gone. No, that’d be crazy. He was happy. He had Tommy back. Tommy in his bed, kissing him and whispering endearments that a week ago would have been _impossible_ , Tommy listening without argument when Lovett called him not just beautiful but brilliant.

They had to make up for lost time, Tommy said, and he was serious about it—stretching Lovett out and working his cock with his mouth until Lovett thought it wasn’t just that his eyes were watering, he was honest to God _crying,_ Tommy was torturing him so perfectly.

So things were good, better than good. There wasn’t anything missing.

But one day, Tommy brought him a postcard from Jon, a postcard that had made its way to the Island, to the lonely witches’ house outside town, on the cliffs above the sea, without the aid of any magic at all. A postcard that said, _I listened to you and went away, and nothing has changed._  

“Hey, I was thinking,” he whispered against Lovett’s ear, as Lovett held the little rectangle of card stock with a trembling hand. “Let’s runaway together.”

 

Aunt Francis found him in his room, anxiously tossing his shirts into different piles.

“You’re packing your bags.”

A gentle opening, yet Lovett’s throat felt thick, and he took a deep breath before he spoke. This was the first time he was packing his bags since he’d come to the Island bereaved as a child. “Tommy asked me to go with him, and I think…we have some unfinished business in Texas…” He trailed off, zipping his duffle and pushing it to the center of the bed so he had a place to sit down. Aunt Francis sat beside him. “It won’t be forever. I know I’ll be back to see you and Aunt Jet and the house.”

“Our curse breaker.”

“Don’t say that,” Lovett protested. “It _feels_ like it’s gone. I feel…lighter, somehow. But how can it be this way? Shouldn’t there be some way to know for sure?”

“I think, sweets—at the risk of sounding too maudlin—it’s like love itself, the proverbial leap of faith. You have to take the risk. There are never any guarantees anyway.”

“Yeah, but—“

“You _feel_ like the curse is lifted, and you and Tommy have waited to be together. This other young man of yours, in a way, he’s been waiting too. What are you going to do, Lovett? Say no to all of it, actively choose unhappiness for the rest of your life?”

Lovett would choose unhappiness forever to keep Tommy safe. He didn’t need to say that. Aunt Francis knew. Yet—it hadn’t kept Tommy safe, forcing them apart—he’d fallen in with Angelov, trying, like Lovett, to be with someone he didn’t love. To make do. What kind of life was that?

“I know I—haven’t been very brave.” He let out his breath in a huff. “I was trying to be…oh, I don’t know…reasonable. Practical.”

“You’ve been plenty brave. You got through this mess—”

“—this mess that _I_ made—“

“—and you managed to hold two hearts in your hand.”

“Oh, right, because I did a bang up job of that.”

“It’s hard being the belle of the ball.”

Lovett knocked their shoulders together. “I feel more like the monkey in the middle. I don’t think I’m cut out for it.”

“Horse shit,” Aunt Francis said. “I can’t think of anyone who’d be better suited to it. Ten years old, you had that boy wrapped around your little finger in a week, and you’ve been bossing him around ever since.”

“Wildly inaccurate,” Lovett argued. “He wasn’t even _here_ for the past five years.”

“And this detective,” she continued. “He went when you told him to go, but he wasn’t happy about it.”

“Aunt Francis, I _ensorcelled_ him. I was so sure he’d be over it by now, that I should stop thinking about him. Being with Tommy, that’s all that I ever wanted, you know? And the jury’s still out on whether this whole thing with Jon is going to wreck that right when it might actually happen. I just—want everything, both of them. I don’t know if that’s okay.”

Aunt Francis put her arm around him and squeezed him. “Jonathan Owens Lovett, I believe in you. You’ll sort it out. Do you know the story about how the curse came to be? The whole thing?”

“I know Maria Owens gave up everything for her lover, and he spurned her,” Lovett recited. “Abandoned her when she was pregnant, and she had to raise her child alone. Like the whole Scarlet Letter situation. Except she cursed him, and he died, and the magic was so big and bad because of her intent that the curse has been handed down the generations to every Owens who loves a man.”

“Mm. This part isn’t as well documented, but the woman that he left Maria for, she and Maria had been great friends, growing up. I’ve often wondered if the three of them had come to some sort of arrangement, if things would have been different.”

Lovett’s mouth twisted. “That’s a hard arrangement to come to in Puritan New England.”

“Not so hard now, Lovett. You and Tommy and Jon together managed to carry out that exorcism, and that change you felt, inviting them into your magic, don’t you think it has something to do with the three of you together?”

“A triangle is a very stable shape.” Lovett sighed.

“Maybe you’re able to do something Maria couldn’t, and that’s good enough to break the old magic and make new magic for this family, Lovett.”

“Oh God. I hope so.” Lovett leaned forward and scrubbed his face with his hands.

“There’s only one way to find out,” Aunt Francis said. “You have to try it out, love.”

Tommy knocked on the door frame. “You ready?”

Aunt Francis patted Lovett’s shoulder and headed downstairs. Lovett hefted his bag and made to follow her, but Tommy stopped him. He was sitting on the window sill, one leg inside, the other thrown over the sill, his foot on the roof shingles. “What are you doing?” he asked Lovett.

“Taking our luggage down the stairs, like a sane person?”

“Uh uh. C’mon.”

Tommy lead him out the window and climbed down the porch to the ground. Lovett tossed him his duffle, and, grumbling, got himself stuck hanging from the porch roof before Tommy, laughing, convinced him to let go, to drop into Tommy’s arms.

Tommy threw their bags in the trunk of James Angelov’s Buick. _Their_ Buick, he tried to think instead. He couldn’t wait to fuck in the enormous back seat, to throw empty fast food bags and cups everywhere, to let highway air rush through the car and drive the last traces of Angelov’s cologne away.

“Are you sure we should be driving this thing? What if it’s c—”

“Don’t even say it. You gotta embrace this new era for us, Lovett.”

“Yeah?”

Tommy leaned against him, pinning Lovett against the car, and he tipped his head back so Tommy could find his mouth and murmur, “An era of having nice things.”

“But what if—are you sure we should be going to Texas? I don’t want you to feel—”

“Babe. Love of my life,” Tommy said, punctuating each endearment with a kiss to Lovett’s neck, “My boyfriend who is literally magic—”

“Alright, I can _do_ magic, I’m not magic—”

“— _nice things_ includes a super hot boyfriend who can do that cherry stem thing with his tongue.”

“If you say so,” Lovett gasped. “But we don’t even know if he can do that.”

“It was part of your spell, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah, but—”

“Look, why don’t we see if it works,” Tommy said. “What’s the worst that could happen, at this point? No, don’t answer that question.” He kissed Lovett quiet. “I have a good feeling about this.”

 

The aunts stood at the gate and waved as they drove away, Aunt Francis holding both their wine glasses so Aunt Jet could hold Alex the Great aloft and move one of his paws in a little wave. Lovett felt a fizz of excitement in his chest, their love and their well-wishing washing over him like a protective white light. He thumped the dash three time for good luck. He was ready to get their detective, the third side of their triangle—a very stable shape—and to see the wide world.

 

* *    * *    * *

 

_Excerpt from journal of Jonathan Lovett, April 14 th, 1998—_

 

We pulled into El Paso with the last glimmer of sunlight. Three days on the road had mellowed us out, I think; the first heady hours of nonstop conversation—catching up on the years we had missed, had known each other solely through letters—petering comfortably out until we go could go an hour at a time sitting quietly together, rediscovering that ability to just exist together in side-by-side thoughts that we had perfected in childhood. Our hands clasped until one of us needed to pull away to shift gears, then finding each other again. Tommy humming off key with the music, me chewing on my soda straw, feet propped up on the dash. Pennsylvania then Virginia then Tennessee blurring out the window.

We pulled into El Paso, and of course I felt a tug in my chest to stay the course, to drive and drive and drive in the wake of the sun. Stronger though, suddenly taking my breath away with its intensity, a pull towards a particular stucco bungalow down a quiet street in the south wards of the city, the address one Detective Jon Favreau had written in perfect, neat letters in the corner of his postcard. There was a porch light gathering moths and the murmur of radio voices leading into a blues standard. For my sweating palms I could blame the lingering heat, but for the anxiety making my head light and my mouth dry, only aching want and fear that Jon wouldn’t want me—wouldn’t want us—anymore. It was as if, here, on his doorstep, the magic I had worked was ricocheting back upon me, and I could feel the fluttering ghost-touches of the true love spell, the rain of flower petals on the back of my neck and shoulders like confetti. But Tommy’s hands were on my shoulders, anchoring me, as I knocked on the door.

We locked eyes as he made his way across the neat living room and pushed the door open for us to come in—a welcome I was sure of when he ducked his head, smiling his slow, gap-toothed smile. Tommy stepped in and kissed him until his expression was only _want_ , surprising me and setting me at ease—if Tommy really wanted this, if he and Jon really wanted each other, maybe we really could—

Then they pulled apart, and before I could speak, I was surrounded. Jon pressed a kiss to my temple, then followed the curve of my ear until I was shivering back against Tommy, whose hands tightened on my waist. He whispered to us, “I don’t know if it was magic, but I was wishing so hard you would come.”

**Author's Note:**

> ▲
> 
> I'm vaguely on tumblr [here](https://coffeecupandcorgi.tumblr.com/), losing my mind about podsa & hockey.


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